The 870,000 photos released by the New York Municipal Archives contain some wonderful images, many simply recording the day to day life in the city.

Family and local history should be part of a concerted effort, archiving daily life for future generations. Those photos that completely absorb us are not necessarily the posed shots in the studio, they are the street scenes, the pictures taken at fairs and fetes, construction sites, work, play, sports matches, simply capturing daily life in our times.

Build an archive of daily life in colour and black and white, print your pictures, label them with as much information as possible, include things such as location,event, the weather, feelings, carefully mount them and then put them away for future generations to discover.

This photo taken in Edinburgh in the 1950s, has just captured a moment, it’s neither well taken and the subject matter isn’t overly thought out but generations later, it gives an absorbing insight into ordinary life. All of life’s everyday events need to be captured because we can’t guess at what might be interesting or important in the future.

No event is too trivial, it’s the trivia that often reveals the most about our lives and it’s the stuff that gets forgotten.

Anyhow take a look through the Big Apple archive for some quite simply incredible shots