Quoting in part from http://www.abc.net.au/landline/content/2016/s4449200.htm Video and transcript available to view at this link.
Grief and Glory: World War One Photographs
Melbourne photographer Michael Silver, assisted by the Anzac Centenary Major Grants Program, has travelled the length and breadth of Victoria, uncovering, documenting, scanning and preserving photographs, artefacts and documents pertaining to the First World War. Many are family treasures. Some are drawn from small regional museums. Most have never before been seen in public.
Across Australia, there are small museums like this and most confront a common challenge: how can they best preserve fragile photographic treasures? Expertly scanning them takes a lot of time and it's costly. For war-time photos taken 100 years ago, time is running out. They're becoming increasingly delicate and their chemicals are degrading.
As he's worked on this project, Michael Silver has learnt of many important, privately-held collections that are fading fast.
We know of quite a few collections, but you've just got to make friends and hope that we can get - scan them properly to save them because they are getting to the end of their physical life at 100 years. But the breadth of this collection, the stories, the words, the artefacts, is just quite extraordinary and just needs saving.
TIM LEE: As chair of Victoria's Anzac Centenary Committee, former state Premier Ted Baillieu is an enthusiastic supporter of the scanning project.
TED BAILLIEU, ANZAC CENTENARY COMMITTEE (Vic.): It's hard to believe after 100 years that there are still shoeboxes out there in the back of the top drawer of a tall cupboard filled with stuff. They might be letters, mementos, they might be photographs, but it's still there and it's been there through the generations that have followed. And so often, no-one's touched it because they don't know what to do with it, but we need that information to come out now.
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