color negatives or diapositives aren't true to life, black and white images even less
Just like dinosaur bones don't tell the whole story, they do tell enough to know that there was a reality that looked different from the one we have now. Photographs help give shape to that reality, not in a complete manner, but a whole lot better than it would have been otherwise. Of course, photographs can and do lie, largely to the extent the photographer chooses to make them lie, but also through the context in which they are presented. So a photograph without context and supporting evidence is a lot weaker, from a representation of truth perspective.
with the ephemeral quality the materials we are all fooling ourselves with it all just like chalk on the sidewalk ?
what do you do with the illusions you make, and do you even suggest that they might not be "real"
Of course everything is ephemeral. It is only the time scale that differs, not the inevitability. Compared to human lifetimes, species have a life of maybe 1 to 4 million years, sometimes a lot less, even. That is still ephemeral! I happen to have a plant species named after me. It is a strange thing: to have this being named after oneself, it having been here for countless millennia, while I have graced the world with my presence for barely a blink of an eye. But I digress. In terms of our experience, archival photographs are pretty permanent, and as real as we choose them to be. Simply because we are even more ephemeral, and our memories ever so fleeting. Photographs are a memory crutch, if nothing else. And if they don't expand anyone else's chosen reality, then what can I do about it when I'm gone? Consider a thousand years from now: What will happen with all the images in the world, and who will look after them? Their context lost, they will become noise, like dinosaur bones withered into pebbles, then grains and finally dust, no longer recognizable for what they once were. And would the dinosaur care?
