Kate Jacus | PRESERVATIONIST | EDUCATOR | CONSULTANT

MY GRANDMOTHER’S LEGACY

Every time I arrived at my grandparents' house, I made a beeline for the photo albums. There were the cloth covered binders, mustard yellow and teal, full of magnetic pages of prints. The photo stand where prints flipped on two large silver rings. And my favorites, the scrapbooks full of b+w prints and ephemera documenting the early years of her marriage. These pictures, and the family stories that went with them, were an integral part of my childhood.

THE JOURNEY BEGINS

My first camera was a Kodak Instamatic, with 110 film and flashcubes. I made scrapbooks of our vacations and of my school memorabilia. I was yearbook editor my senior year. I worked at the Smithsonian in college, and majored in history. I got a graduate degree in museum studies. My love of stories and history and "the organizing gene" were a perfect fit for working with museum objects. Moving back to my hometown of Rochester, NY, I was lucky to end up at the Strong Museum, where I spent eight years as the Collections Manager, overseeing the cataloging, photography, and archival storage of the museum’s 500,000+ objects.

SHARING STORIES

Looking for other ways to share stories, I got a MBA and spent nine years in corporate marketing. Because the thought of helping families use their photos to tell stories had always been in the back of my head, when the time was right in 2016, I started The Photo Curator. Originally it was simply a photo organizing business, digitizing prints, managing online photo libraries, and creating photo books. It soon became clear however, that people also wanted to know how to deal with their objects, not just their photos.

MUSEUM ROOTS

Happily I’ve reconnected with my collections management roots, harking back to the seven museums I’ve worked at over the years, and adding a marketing position at Archival Methods to the mix. My work there affords me a larger platform from which to present workshops and lectures on preserving photographs and family heirlooms. Being on the manufacturing side of the archival industry gives me a different perspective, and I’m eager to share information so that people can make informed decisions about storing their heirlooms.

impacting the industry

The Association of Professional Photo Organizers was a critical resource as I started The Photo Curator. High level training and a supportive community are the hallmarks of this organization, and it was easy to get involved. Speaking at the national conferences led to my current role as Project Manager, where I help design content to benefit the photo management industry.