Cieslak Found Family Photos

Goal

We found a relatively large number of photos that were stored in boxes that our mother had when she passed away. Unfortunately, there was no organization or documentation regarding most of the photos, so we were left with the quandary of what to do with 600+ photos dating back to probably the 1930’s-1960’s mostly but some others more current probably through the 1970’s. We wanted to preserve these photos both physically yet find a way to share them with any interested party.

Concept

As the first step, we knew we would have to scan the photos to digitize them. The next hurdle was to figure out how to organize them but in the absence of any documentation or anyone with extensive knowledge as to the contents of the photos, we abandoned the organization objective. After thinking about the issue for a while, we thought how surprised we were at the number of photos and the excitement of looking at each photo even though there was no order to them. We thought, why not pass that experience on to anyone wanting to view the photos.

Rather than letting viewers to just page through photo by photo, we wanted to impart as much knowledge of photos we did recognize or could speculate as to what the photo contained. Then, we decided to make a video of each group of photos and provide some amount of narration for each photo either describing the person(s) and places of the photo content to the best of our ability or merely state, we don’t have any idea of who or what we were looking at. For those photos, were merely state “Unknown”.

Methodology

We decided to make a video of each group of photos. Each photo will have a narrative either stating “Unknown” or the narrative will try to identify as many people as possible and any location information. Periodic commentary is interjected to make things lite. We have used artificial intelligence to create each narrative by using a text to speech feature.

We have created a directory of all the people mentioned in the videos and their relationship to the Cieslak and Rybicki families. You can find it here.

If, as you are viewing the videos, you have any comments, recommendations, or identity information please let us know. Because there is no way to identify the individual photo you are viewing, please note the timestamp for the photo being viewed and let us know the group name and timestamp. You can communicate with us via email by clicking the Email link below. If the email link fails, send email to familyphotos@cieslak.family.

How to use:

There are two sections following.

The first section is Video Collections. If you want to view a video, click on the video name. To download a copy of the video, click on the associated Download button. It should be noted that depending on the app you used to view a video, it may have an option to save the same video which would eliminate the need to do a separate download.

The second section is Original Digitized Photos; This section contains the original photos that make up the video put into groups that match the photos you will see in the videos. Clicking on the Download button will download an .exe file that when executed will create a folder with all the photos for the selected group.

Video Collections

Original Digitized Photos

Comments/Corrections

If you have identification information or photos to contribute, please reach out.

familyphotos@cieslak.family