Are We Losing Our Memories?
This is the question that floated to the surface of my mind through a Benadryl induced fog. As I fight my latest bout of bronchitis I sit and ponder life’s tough questions. OK, so it’s not exactly a “What is the meaning of life?” type question. But it’s a fair question that was raised while I was browsing the net and reading some interesting post.
The first thing that planted the seed for this line of thinking was a report I read about a shoebox of glass plate negatives that were found in Edinburgh. A total of 178 negatives were found in a shoebox for a pair of grey, size 9, Peter Lord slip-ons, wrapped in copies of The Statesman newspaper date 1914. Can you imagine blowing the dust off this old shoebox to find a treasure like this? What I wouldn’t give to have been the one to find this. But more importantly, someone found them. A piece of history, hunk of heritage saved by a cardboard shoebox and old newspaper. How cool is that?
It got me thinking: How are we saving our history? My guess is we have more images made of our world in the last few years than in the combined previous history of analog photography. Yet, where are these digital images? Certainly not in some old shoebox wrapped in newspaper. Not in an old metal foot-locker like most of my old negatives and slides. Most are sitting on an iffy hard drive that is waiting to go bad. Hear me now when I say, I am not bemoaning progress. I love digital photography. But are we really thinking through how we are going to archive these images? I assume the museums are tackling this question. Many of us full-time photographers are attempting to address this as well. But what about the world’s families? Millions of people are storing millions of images that at the moment might seem insignificant, yet one day might give our grandchildren an insight into the culture we live in. Those glass plates, they were not from some professional photographer. They were just “snaps” of daily life in British India, that today are an invaluable look into history.
A Facebook friend and fellow photographer, Ian Furniss wrote, “I always worry a little about what will happen to the records of our lives since the demise of hard copy film, no long-lost hard drives found in the attic I guess…”
I guess, the quick answer is, the Internet. Unless the unthinkable happens and somehow we lose the Net, it will be our attic of sorts. It is not the same of course – virtual never is. We have already lost the tactile experience of the darkroom, how long will it be before we lose the experience of flipping through old photos with Grandma during Christmas visits? “Hey Granny, can we look at your old photos of you when you were young on your iPad?” Definitely not the same. Maybe digital photo books are the answer. The kind like Blurb, Lightroom and others offer us to bind and print our images for just a little work and a small price. But, who really uses them? I never used albums when I had prints. I used shoe boxes.
Then, just this weekend (I think I was the last to know about this) I saw this ad for aday.org.
Expressions of Humankind, a Swedish non-profit foundation came up this idea to have everyone photograph the same day around the world. This is not a new idea. People have been shooting simultaneous images of the world long before digital imagery. But the motivation for this is was struck a cord with me. It was as if they were reading my mind. Weird.
Why should I join?
“Because your life matters…. Because you like the thought of saving a little something of yourself for generations to come. Because your take on daily life is part of a much bigger picture.”
This is not the answer to my musing. I don’t think there is an answer. There is no digital dusty shoebox. But this is a nice attempt. I think I will do it for now, for today. I think I will get out and photograph tomorrow for other tomorrows. Want to join me?
I’d like us to consider the days when am image truly meant something – a precious memory worth printing and carrying in your wallet or a locket……in this digital age of [disposable] images, they can easily be one of 1000’s and our attitude can be, “next!”
I am not sure I would want to ever go back, but I agree. The abundance of something can certainly reduce its value. Strange times we live in.
I tend to worry more about the public record than private images. Newspapers used to develop film, make prints, file negs and prints related to stories they covered. Now that everything is digital, when an issue goes to press, all the digital images are deleted. To rely on old print issues, or digital images surviving online, is just crazy.
I wouldn’t want to go back to pre-digital either, but I can’t help thinking about how much of our history is being lost daily with the simple act of hitting ‘delete’.
I don’t want to be all doom and gloom. But I can’t help think at times that we are being swept away by the momentum of change without counting the cost.
In addition to the loss of record and memories–both public and private because everything is stored somehow in cyberspace,one major problem is that the current storage disks or drives won’t last forever and thus puts all of us in the never-ending cycle of transferring memories and photos onto newer technology as it becomes available. But, who will do this after we are gone? RIT has done quite a bit of research on the archival storage of digital materials and no one has any good answers.Even the best drives and disks decay over time. It begs the question as to whether we all ought to be advocating for better storage technology that does not decay or become totally obsolete over time.
I sure do miss contact sheets instead of scrolling through endless folders in lightroom and rolls of 36 exposures instead of 32gb cards that hold thousands of pictures and having to wait before looking at your images instead of just looking right at the back of your camera. I also miss creating something tangible like a negative or hand made prints.I feel digital photography has stolen these things away.
“When I shoot film I’m always looking for the next photo, when I shoot digital I keep looking at the last photo.” ~ @mseamans2
I love this essay, Matt and you’ve got me wheels turning. I have produced a couple of photo books, but they don’t have the same effect as traditional photo albums, which somehow pay more respect to individual images and invite exploration. I love to print and save photos in regular notebooks, my family and friends enjoy the results and, frankly, sharing is the most important part of the process.
To produce an appealing book from those online sites takes a monumental effort. The only one which made me proud took over a month to prepare. Most people don’t have that amount of time to devote to memories, but they can easily slide some photos into a plastic sleeve and jot a clever ditty at the bottom. The old way was easier to finish.
In many homes, digital frames, with images scrolling at ~ 15 sec/frame, have taken the place of these albums, but they don’t give the viewer a chance to digest the images.
Since the coming of the digital age, I’ve noticed a similar loss with our collective writings, which used to be delivered by the postman or a fax machine. I miss the paper versions of these life records. To be certain our histories are not lost, I’ve been printing significant e-mails and put them in binders, along with the hard copy letters and cards from the past. It has been a huge treat to review them. I don’t remember going to a Bob Dylan concert in Denver, but surely I did because I wrote about it to my grandmother and she saved that letter in a box, in the attic. Hmmm… I see a theme here….You’ve got to love those attics!
I am concerned with DVDs and CDs going bad as well as HDs crashing. I am in the process of converting thousands of slides to digital and then making books about the locations I have photographed. I have used blurb for most of the books and think this will last the longest without reprocessing the storage devices. I’m looking into storing the images on tape. Any thoughts about this process and what equipment is needed?
I have heard that DVDs have a 10yr life expectancy. Not sure if that is true. But one of the things that complicates all this is that because digital imagining is so convenient, we have thousands more images of the mundane than we ever would have had with film. We are much less judicious about what we photograph. This works for us and against us. For us, in that we capture everything. Against us, in that there is no way I would put all my images on a large set of DVD.
Even with DVDs, as we have said, we still loose the spontaneity of flipping through the “shoebox”.
Thanks for your comment.
Alan (above) sent this link to me. Photojournalist Nick Danziger wants to limit the number of digital photographs people are allowed to take to one a day.
“I believe my idea will make the world an even more captivating and interesting place than it already is.”
Podcast HERE.
The BBC article HERE