19. 100 Years Ago in Gainesville; Digital Restoration of The Ramsey Collection

Abstract

The Northeast Georgia History Center recently received a donation of 2,000 glass negatives from the 1920s and 30s. The donation came from a gentleman who found them in his warehouse in Ohio. These photographs were taken in Gainesville, but we are not sure how they migrated from Georgia to Ohio. As an Intern at the History Center, my job is to observe, scan, and preserve the negatives. My poster will show the process by which each negative is carefully scanned, placed in a sleeve, labeled, and placed in a box. All the negatives are stored in a cool environment with no light exposure. These negatives are especially important to Gainesville history because they bring visual evidence of what people and places looked like during this period in Gainesville’s history. Common images in these negatives are portraits, profiles, and family pictures. This evidence can help historians observe the importance of items that individuals incorporated into their portraits to show their wealth and status.