| Color photographs from 1908 recently surfaced, donated to a museum by the elderly woman whose mother originally owned them.
Some of the lines from the story that struck me as interesting, given our determination to get rid of stuff, or to stop storing it and start using it:
Almost as intriguing as the pictures themselves, however, is the story of how they recently made their way from a house in Buffalo, where they apparently sat unseen for decades, to the collection of the George Eastman House in Rochester...
and
Mr. Plache, speaking on behalf of Mrs. Albright, said that she was unable to conduct an interview about the photographs, which probably came into her possession after her mother’s death in 1939. But as far as anyone associated with Mrs. Albright knows, she never displayed them and they were kept in a cupboard or closet in her house for decades. It is unclear whether she knew that two of the plates were Steichen photographs and not works by her mother.
Mr. Bannon said that because the photographs had sat for so long out of the light, their colors remained particularly vivid. "They’re in just as perfect a shape as you could expect from something from almost a century ago," he said.
and
But prolonged exposure to light can wash out the images. After Eastman House displays the pictures they will be returned to storage.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/21/arts/design/21stei.html?em&ex=1179892800&en=2a930598362e904a&ei=5087%0A | 
