As I’ve mentioned previously, just because an album may be organized chronologically does not mean it was scrapbooked chronologically. It is far more common for a person to scrapbook whatever they want and then organize the pages chronologically for the album. Layouts are almost always organized chronologically.
Photographs on the layouts, however, are not necessarily organized chronologically, but some respondents took care to make sure that they are. The photographs on a layout are typically from one event or short period of time (e.g., usually a day or a week, occasionally a month, rarely a year). Occasionally, a layout may contain photographs across different years. For example, one respondent does this with some older photographs of herself across several years that she did not really know what else to do with. She organizes them chronologically on one page and focuses on the outfits producing a fashion timeline.
In other words, it is the rare scrapbooker who organizes photographs on a layout in a time-order fashion. As I am writing this post, however, I am struck by the time order of many Project Life adherents. For scrapbookers using weekly two-page Project Life spreads their photographs are often organized in time order, too. Interesting.
Another wrinkle in this finding is that with the rise of digital photography, it is super easy to find out the time order of photographs so that they can be organized chronologically on a layout. A person could look up the data from the photo or the photo may even be timestamped. It just was not possible to get this level of time order precision in the film era.
What about you? Do you ever organize photographs on a single layout based on time? Why or why not?
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Stephanie Medley-Rath is a sociologist and scrapbooker who studies scrapbooking and memory keeping. Scrapworthy Lives is a blog focused on her sociological analysis of scrapbooking, with a sprinkling of posts about Stephanie's own scrapbooking projects.
