Museum curators seek personal, family photos of World War II era

When Michelle Delaney started to research World War II photography two years ago, she discovered a hole in the National Museum of American History's archives.

There were hundreds of pictures by well-known photojournalists such as Life's Margaret Bourke-White and Robert Capa and thousands from official military cameramen, but fewer than 50 photographs taken by soldiers and their families.

"Personal photographs record life in a different way than the images of military combat or professional photojournalism," Delaney, a curator at the museum, tells Smithsonian magazine.

So she scoured eBay and visited flea markets for World War II-era snapshots, acquiring a few hundred pictures for the collection. With the 60th anniversary of the end of the war, she says her quest grows more urgent, as the population of veterans dwindles.

Among the first to donate a collection of pictures to Delaney's project was her mother, Barbara Titanic. One, a faded black-and-white taken with a Brownie Kodak in 1944 by Delaney's grandfather, shows her then 5-year-old mother in a plaid coat standing next to her great uncle, Sam Inzerra, a sailor home on furlough from a tour in the Pacific. Inzerra wears a smart Navy peacoat, his white sailor's cap and a large cockeyed grin.

It was just the sort of "cherished moment" that Delaney has been looking for.

She has found that families, including her own, are often reluctant to give up heirlooms. It wasn't until Delaney made copies of the originals for her mother that Titanic finally agreed to donate them.

Delaney is one of a growing number of photographic curators and collectors searching for everyday pictures.

The Getty Museum in Los Angeles recently exhibited nearly 200 family photographs. Getty curator Weston Naef says that interest in "vernacular photography" stems from the digitalization of photography -- oh-so-easy delete buttons, CD-formatted photo albums -- that "will end the era of snapshots as we know them."