UNLV project looks for gold in family photos

Sometimes the best chroniclers of history are just regular people armed with a Brownie — or a Polaroid, an Instamatic, a 35mm point-and-shoot or, these days, a digital camera or cellphone — taking family photos.

The photo of kids playing catch in a vacant lot that’s now a mall. The long-closed store visible in the shot of a downtown parade. Even the cheesy photo of a sibling doing that fingers-behind-the-head thing during a childhood visit to a Las Vegas hotel that doesn’t exist anymore.

All sorts of historically important stuff might be found in family photos, and that’s the notion behind “Snapshots of History: 1960s-1990s,” in which Southern Nevadans are being asked to scour their own photos taken between 1960 and 1999 for potential archive-worthy keepers.

“We’re asking people: Do you have those photos?” says Jennifer Shell, coordinator of educational media services for Vegas PBS, which is managing Saturday’s event. Of particular interest are photos of properties that since have been demolished, housing developments that were under construction during the period, and images of what Las Vegas life was like during those decades.

The project is being funded by a $12,000 National Endowment for the Humanities grant, Shell says, and the purpose is “to reach into the community and build awareness of the tremendous growth that has happened in Las Vegas.”