I don't want to keep old family pictures

[Sweetener12]

So the other day I was doing a big cleaning around the house and found a bunch or very old photo albums that belong to my father's family. My father passed away several years ago and these albums are full of his grandparent's photos, I've never knew these people and I'm not even interested, so I wanted to get rid of them but my DM is strongly against. She says this is the memory, even though she's never knew her DH's grandparents and aunts, etc. She doesn't want me to get rid of them and keeps telling I have to digitize these pics and save them somehow. I find this to be completely senseless, tho.
What do you think? AIBU to not wanting to keep the photos of the people I've never met?

@Frenchfancy

I have the same issue with albums from my GM and DHs great uncle. When time comes for a great clear out they will go in the bin. Photos are for memories, if there is no memory and it is a blurry photo of someone you don't know what is the point of keeping them?

Photos from the 1920s and 30s (which are what OP says she has) are unlikely to be blurry as most were taken by professional photographers.

I disagree that photos are memories; they are often precisely the opposite- a physical record of a person you could never have met or an occasion that you could never have attended. One of my most treasured old photos is of my Dad as a boy feeding the pigeons in Trafalgar Square with his aunt. I did not see that photo until after they had both died and neither ever mentioned that trip to me (they lived in Scotland so a London visit in the early 1950s would have been a big deal). In fact, by the time I saw the picture there was nobody left living in my family who might ever have been told about that trip. It is immensely important to me that the photo told me that it happened, and to see the joy on their faces.

ArgumentativeAardvaark But as that's a photo of your father, who you knew and cared about, it's a totally different situation. Would you be as pleased to see a photo of a random stranger feeding a pigeon in Trafalgar square? If you would, you don't need to wait - just google "boy pigeons Trafalgar square old photo", it's the exact same thing.

@1300cakes

ArgumentativeAardvaark But as that's a photo of your father, who you knew and cared about, it's a totally different situation. Would you be as pleased to see a photo of a random stranger feeding a pigeon in Trafalgar square? If you would, you don't need to wait - just google "boy pigeons Trafalgar square old photo", it's the exact same thing.

I was responding to the statement that photos are memories, with an example of one which is important to me but is not my memory.

You’re right that I wouldn’t be as interested in a photo of a stranger, but I would be interested in a picture of a relative that I had never met. (Which is OP’s situation).

I am fairly interested in old photos of strangers, for the clothes, the hairstyles, the streetscapes, or if someone else shows me a picture of their relative (eg the pics on WHo Do You Think You Are? Or A House Through Time”)

Your mother should take them. She has every right to veto them being destroyed, but not to impose keeping and cataloguing them on someone else.

If you post in a surname group, any names you do know of your grandparents families, I would be surprised if they weren't snapped up by people researching that/those names. Local family history centres may take them.