Hi

My thinly veiled's Grandad passed away a couple of weeks ago at the grand old age of 95 years and 9 months, so it goes

her dad has decided that I should be entrusted with the boxes and suitcases full of his old negatives & slides (actually it was more he asked if I'd like them otherwise they were going to be taken to the skip - can you imagine!)

Said grandad (Harald) was born in Estonia and came to Sweden during WWII when the Soviets RE-occupied/annexed the country - to clarify;
Soviets occupied Estonia 1940-41
Nazis occupied (liberated) Estonia 1941-1944
Soviets re-occupied 1944-1991

Harald left Estonia in 1943 at the age of 25 (he was born in 1918 - incidentally the year that Estonia first gained status as an independent republic)
I have not yet taken delivery of the archive (it's coming this weekend) though I have been told that it contains slides, photographs & negatives covering the entire period of his life - from baby photos to school pictures to photos of him on his military service in the late 30s, photos of Estonia under Russian occupation, Nazi occupation and of course photos of Stockholm from 1943 up to the present day

So anyway, I wondered a few things

1) has anyone else on here ever undertaken the task of sorting through the photo archive of someone's life (or similar) either professionally or as a researcher/student or just a family member ? If so are there any tips or advice you could give as I've never done this before and I'm keen to start out right as to avoid issues further down the line

2) is this a 'body of work' that the general viewer would be interested in from a lay historical point of view? I'm wondering whether/how to make the archive public. Whether to make a blog or website or just upload to Flickr or whatnot - does anyone have any #opinions or advice on that front?

3) bit more of a stretch but from an academic perspective I reckon there must be at least a couple of European history graduates on here - what's the current thinking on the historical value of nearly 100 years of photos of a completely ordinary bloke? Should I be thinking of donating this archive once I've sorted it or is this sort of thing a lot more common than I'd imagine (point of reference: my father's grandparents were killed in Auschwitz and we had their Auschwitz diaries and tried to donate them to Jewish museums in the late 80s/early 90s and they were all like 'nah, keep 'em, we get a dozen of these a week)

so, advice please if you have any

..........
while we're on the subject I saw a documentary a couple of weeks ago about a guy who bought a photo archive by random chance in an auction and it is AMAZING and you should watch it - it's on Swedish TV iplayer type thing but I think it's viewable in the UK (and it's in English)
http://www.svtplay.se/video/2136866/vivian-maiers-okanda-bildskatt

so yeah, tell me what to do with Harald's photos and/or let's discuss Vivian Maier

(if this doesn't post I'm going to throttle Sean Adams)