The historic value of current photographs

summicron1 · Jul 24, 2014

A blog in which I compare pictures taken of events today -- In Utah, the Pioneer Days Parade in Ogden -- with their potential historical value as shown by images of the same parade taken 75 years ago.

I work in the Ogden museum and I'm constantly trying to get folks to remember that today's pictures may look ho-hum, but in the future they'll be historical objects, valuable images of the past.

http://charlestrentelman.blogspot.com/2014/07/pioneer-days-photo-history.html

a sample image from 1940 --

Jeff Kubach · Jul 25, 2014

I agree. BTW interseting photo.

Jeff

FujiLove · Jul 25, 2014

You could argue that individual images being shot today have much less historical significance simply because of the volume of still and moving images that are recorded. If you look back to the 40's or 50's, it was relatively rare for someone to wander the streets and shoot, let's say, an ordinary building and it's surrounding cars, advertising posters, street furniture etc. Today, any building you could find has probably already been photographed a thousand times, so one person's addition to that record will be relatively small.

Perhaps analogue photography in today's world is different, because it has a permanence not found in the digital domain. I recently found a stack of 'ZIP disks' that I used to store my work and photos on about 16 years ago. I no longer own a drive that plays the disks, or a computer with an interface to plug a drive into if I bought one. Knowing that there was *probably* nothing of value on them and they had been copied elsewhere long ago, I physically destroyed them and threw them out. Those were digital files from less than two decades old. There's a chance that historians looking back at these times will have few digital images to review given how easily disk drives fail, formats become obsolete and digital files are easily lost.

In summary: shoot film!

Mr Bill · Jul 25, 2014

When I was a young pup, learning about photography, one point was often emphasized - to make your photos saleable for longer a period of time, avoid dating the photo. Obviously this was a bad idea from an historic perspective, which seems more important to me now.

I enjoyed your photo set by the pharmacist Ray Cardon. But instead of just the parade, a big deal at that time, I'm sure, I wish he had also turned the camera the other way and photographed the more mundane happenings - the pharmacy at work.

Fifty years from now, photos of people putting gasoline into their archaic, internal-combustion engined automobiles will show future generations how rough we had it. Or how about people using pay phones (if it's not already too late), or grabbing a folded stack of printed paper out of coin-operated box chained to a light post, to get their daily news?

One thing I wish I had done back in the day was to photograph people smoking on airplanes, just so younger people could realize what those "No Smoking" lights were for.

Roboticspro · Jul 25, 2014

From my Dad's files...

Good Morning,

I think that it is very important to remember that what we see today as common-place, could be seen in a much different context, say a decade, or most certainly generations later. I recently started going through literally thousands of negatives & chromes that my Dad had taken since the early 1920's...proof of the archival quality of good processing and the luck of dry and dust-free storage. Here is one example; the photo is of the "Coronation 6220", which was the fastest steam locomotive in Britain in 1937, at 116 MPH (The Mallard actually did 126 MPH, but the conditions and timing were questionable by many). It was brought to the U.S. to make a country-wide tour, to give glimpse of the wonderful engineering and craftsmanship skills of the British railroading experience. This actual train, from my understanding, is now in a museum in NYC, re-painted 6225, which is something that I plan to see before the end of the summer. So yes, there are reasons, many good reasons to capture moments of time for those who will come after us...

Regards,

Edd

Maris · Jul 25, 2014

It has been said in jest, but there is more than a grain of truth in it, that there are no bad 100 year old photographs. And remember, this very day, given the passage of time, will become 100 years ago. I suspect eye-readable photographs unsupported by fancy and fragile read-out technology will become the only record of what our times looked like.

pentaxuser · Jul 25, 2014

Maris said:
. I suspect eye-readable photographs unsupported by fancy and fragile read-out technology will become the only record of what our times looked like.

I worry that with what appears to be a worrying change in our psyche the human race in 100 years will not be concerned with what the world looked like a 100 years in the past. Could we possibly kill off our curiosity about history in as little as 100 years?

It may be all down to the course our education takes. If we fail to teach history or excite childrens' interest in it then we could return to the equivalent of a pre-universal education era. Most people, say 200 years ago in the early 1800s had no interest in what had occurred a 100 years earlier.

pentaxuser

ROL · Jul 25, 2014

Thanks for the observation. I'm not admitting to any of my works being "ho-hum", but it has become clear over the last few years that several of my fine art prints now depict natural structures no longer present – so much so that I now consider part of my work to be accidental documentary as well. I guess I better think twice before destroying some of those unprinted negatives...

NedL · Jul 25, 2014

pentaxuser said:
Could we possibly kill off our curiosity about history in as little as 100 years?
pentaxuser

I can surely see why this is a worry but I've got more faith in us than that. I think prints will be valuable.

I love this blog, it had great cirkut pictures not that long ago, and I love looking at old pictures. There are some fun parade photos from my home town from about 100 years ago, it's wonderful to see how people dressed and what main street looked like, and somehow I almost imagine it was in that incredible black and white atmosphere...

I've been trying to take parade pictures for a few years, since my daughter has been in the school marching band. Until this year I was never happy with any results, mostly because I was trying to use too slow film and too slow a lens. This year I used tri-x in diafine and they came out great, but they look like they were taken 50 years ago... that's probably why I like them! The parade has antique cars and horses and it all looks "just like it should"....

summicron1 · Jul 25, 2014

HE DID shoot the inside of the drugstore !!! There are half a dozen or more internal shots of the pharmacy and workers....Those are another blog post.

And my sister, a senior scientist at the Getty Conservation Institute in LA, agrees with the fear that, in 50 years or even less, a lot of the digital images of today will be lost/unrecoverable, just like those zip discs. Meanwhile, 75 year old film makes images that look new, and the technology is so simple anyone with a first year of chemistry under his/her belt can do it

thanks

Charlie

wiltw · Jul 26, 2014

summicron1 said:
I work in the Ogden museum and I'm constantly trying to get folks to remember that today's pictures may look ho-hum, but in the future they'll be historical objects, valuable images of the past.

Exactly the point I have made during my past rants over the past 10 years to digital photographers about how so much historical data will become inaccessible, because the digital files are not accessible due to the fact that they are written onto electronic media which can no longer be read in the future on the computers of tomorrow!

Theo Sulphate · Jul 26, 2014

The argument from the digital camp is that an image can be copied indefinitely and can also be stored "in the cloud". However, my theory is that any digital image that isn't propagated to a new media type every 10-15 years will eventually become inaccessible regardless of how many copies there are. The image will survive only for as long as there's someone interested in preserving it in the latest media and format. As for the cloud, whatever entity that operates the cloud could disappear, along with its contents, very quickly.

So, preservation of digital imagery depends upon someone interested - grandchildren - copying that ancient USB stick or CD onto the latest quantum cube memory device, or whatever. Yet, this is where a shoebox full of 4x6 prints wins: little Bobby of the future can see what's in the box.

I would go one step further: annotate the photos! I've inherited dozens of photos from my family and there's no one left to tell me who these three people are standing in front of a house in an unknown city. At antique sales I've seen hundreds of such photos, some of them intriguing, and wish there was a note on the back.

Ken Nadvornick · Jul 26, 2014

summicron1 said:
A blog in which I compare pictures taken of events today -- In Utah, the Pioneer Days Parade in Ogden -- with their potential historical value as shown by images of the same parade taken 75 years ago.

I work in the Ogden museum and I'm constantly trying to get folks to remember that today's pictures may look ho-hum, but in the future they'll be historical objects, valuable images of the past.

http://charlestrentelman.blogspot.com/2014/07/pioneer-days-photo-history.html

a sample image from 1940 -- View attachment 91741

Here is that street corner in August, 2012, for anyone interested.

The upper facade of the red brick building matches blog photo #5. I had actually found this before realizing that you had already given the cross street as 22nd. The Ogden Motor Car Company building is no more.

Ken

The historic value of current photographs

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