Should photos of naked babies be trashed?

[Daniel D. Teoli Jr.]

They have a gal at the Data Hoarders Forum that has archived 25,000 chromes with online access. She has done a bang-up job at providing hi-res scans of found chromes for open content CC use. She scans everything, bad exposure, fogged chromes, whatever. But she does not scan naked babies and said so when some kids criticized her for 'privacy and copyright issues' for working with other people's found photos. 

 

Well, leave it to the kids to come up with privacy and copyright with found photos. The job of the archivist is mainly to deal with other people's material and some of it was copyrighted at one time or maybe still is. The job of the archivist is to sift out what needs to be archived balanced with copyright. And for the women and for the young people, maybe privacy is a concern. (Although, from what I read, privacy is a big issue in Europe, so it may all depend on which country you are in.)

 

 As a candid street photographer for 50+ years and an archivist for many decades, privacy seldom enters my purview. My concern? Is it legal? If legal, I do as I like most of the time. And with copyright, the legal question must be balanced with preservation. This comes under the auspices of the greater good or the greater right. Although if I know something may hurt someone, I will inject some privacy concerns in it, such as I did with 'Hakenkreuz in a Dress.' Or when I put certain photos up at Wiki Commons and they demand commercial use license. I will block out the face, and in the description, I mention the same photo is available at the I.A., with no censorship for non-commercial use. 

 

But getting back to these naked babies...what should be done with them? 

 

Trashed? 

 

Archived as is? 

 

Censored with privates blocked out?

 

Her Archive is totally unorganized, so if the naked babies would have been done, they would have been mixed in with everything else. As it stands, if the naked babies were done, they would stand out like a sore thumb as a collection of naked babies! 

 

I have a large VHS Archive and some of the home movie found footage may have the family's naked baby in them. I've never thought anything of it. I copy the tapes as-is. I guess if a woman or young person was digitizing them, they would cut out the naked babies.

Edited March 14, 2022 by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.