Interesting that you say it's not true when there are academic conferences held for archivists solely on the problems of futureproofing storage. If you work for, say, the British Museum, there may be a budget for transferring digital technologies as long as the museum maintains its funding streams. But the average Joe's photo collection are not the priceless artefacts that demand full time staff salaries testing the data, maintaining humidity and copying it to whatever format comes along in perpetuity. More likely it will be a few hard drives someone inherits with a letter saying it contains the pictures of a camera nut uncle. Is a non-photographer going to hook it up and look through a few hundred thousand photographs, and preserve them in the format of the day - if their computer has recognisable ports - or get on with their life and leave it to someone else?I'm sorry but it is just not true. I am developing a cataloguing system for libraries and our users have hundred of thousand digital images, and millions of bibliographic records, accumulated on over 40 years of work on many different computer systems. And yet all of it works together. It just doesn't happen that you loose all your digital stuff every day.
A community archive is not an individual's photographic collection. A museum or library have a commitment to preserving the material they are custodians of. They cannot hope to preserve a fraction of a percentage of the work out there, nor have they any idea what future generations will consider important.But what you say is also true for every artifact, non only computers. Our book vault here is fireproof and temperature controlled, with a halon fire estinghushing system. And all this only for books! Our server room in contrast is much more mundane. Yet we do not loose books nor digital data.
What I'm saying is that preserving digital data and actual physical manufact more or less takes the same effort. With the difference that you can make indefinite copies of your digital data. It really just takes a couple hard drives and some organization not to lose stuff.
The problem of organizing your data is a separate one. I know of libraries that refused collections of books/photos/films only because they were a mess and the library could not afford to catalogue and preserve them. Much of that ended in a bin. And it was physical documents stored in a box. It is the same with digital files.
I love film - I have more film in my fridge than food - and film can also be a superb medium to long term store digital files. But I just don't feel it is right to consider digital data a "ticking bomb" that it is going to self destruct at any moment. It just takes some care and understanding, the same that takes for any thing we wish to preserve.
You are taking a purely technological position on data storage. No one is arguing that data can be preserved given sufficient resources and motivation. The reason personal photographs are saved in an immediately accessible format by successive generations is the issue. As data becomes more prolific there is less reason to save it all, less motive to search out what is and isn't relevant, and changes in technology influence peoples' motivation and accessibility. Immediacy of content is the advantage of a personal collection, archival permanency is the priority of a community resource that has been preselected.This is not my point. My point is: what is the difference with one thousand disorganized images on a hard drive and one thousand disorganized images in a box?
''Shooting film is the only option for keeping your photos forever" not it is not. If one can be serious about archiving physical photo/negs, there is no reason why someone could not be serious about archiving digital datas. Stop the bias plz.
''Shooting film is the only option for keeping your photos forever" not it is not. If one can be serious about archiving physical photo/negs, there is no reason why someone could not be serious about archiving digital datas. Stop the bias plz.
Exactly. I don't think people have taken on board the practical or cultural implications of technological change. In the last 30 years there have been a plethora of still and moving image formats and interfaces, and there's no reason to think the future will lessen that proliferation. It may not even be the equivalent of storing on a video disk or 8mm cartridge which offers the possibility that someone, somewhere will have a working machine, and the new owner will care enough to pay to have the information transferred. It'll probably be more like finding your life's work on Polaroid's short-lived movie format, with no existing manufacturer, a defunct technology and a handful of thoroughly dead machines.I think that is one of his main points how many people are serious about archiving their photos ?, in the old days you got your pictures and negatives back and they will/did/do last a lifetime in a draw wether you were intrested in photography or not.
A bunch of BS! Film photos don't last forever and that is not the reason to shoot film. And to answer him yes I do have files since my DOS computer back in 1989. Many of the files I have transferred to other media like thumb drive etc.. but I still have the original floppy and I still have the drive to read them.
You can be as serious as you want, but when you're gone then the life of those digital backups is at risk because your heirs, if any, likely won't know or care what is on that digital media and won't continue keeping those images backed up or converted to the latest media or format.
Yet, simple prints or negatives in a shoebox are instantly viewable without any electronics or computer processing.
If Vivian Maier's photos were on discs in a storage unit, they'd've never been seen. Yet they *were* discovered simply because they were negatives that could be viewed and someone thought they were worth printing.
I think that is one of his main points how many people are serious about archiving their photos ?, in the old days you got your pictures and negatives back and they will/did/do last a lifetime in a draw wether you were intrested in photography or not.
My old mother has photos and negatives in a trunk that go back to the 40s she wouldn;t know what a box of Tri-X or a digital file was if you asked her.
Interestingly the advent of 5.24" floppy disks coincided with my serious interest in photography. They came out in 1976, I started shooting film in earnest in 1975. I don't know if a single floppy would be able to hold all the information a single 35mm negative, I suspect not. In that time all kinds of storage media have come and gone, and apart from scanning my negatives for USB hard drives in recent years, I've done nothing to them apart from print. If I'd been able to photograph on a five-and-a-quarter inch disk, how many generations of technology would I have had to pursue to keep them up to date?When 3.5" floppies came along, I moved my files from my 5.25" drive to 3.5" floppies. I kept my 5.25" drive for a while just in case, but after a while, it made no sense, so I pitched it. Same with my 3.5" drive. Same with 8mm video and VHS tape. Now my files are on a backup USB hard drive and video is on DVD. When it looks like those medium are no longer supported, if I should live so long, I'll move them again. Doing so every 10 or 15 years really isn't a big deal. I once knew a guy who unplugged his TV at the wall so he wouldn't wear out the on/off switch. It takes all kinds.
Should you need a continuous power supply to look at or keep photographs any time you want to see them? Is photography now a screen based medium? A print is a visceral medium, same as a printed book.
I agree. My default method is printed books. I get to say what order, size and shape the images are seen, and can introduce text if it's important. I can make silver prints and C-types from the negatives, and scan them for my records. I recently presented such a book to my in-laws who were blown away and described it as an "heirloom". The same shots on an iPad would be flicked through and forgotten in 5 minutes. That's the effect printed matter has on people. There's no comparison between the engagement of an image on a screen and a printed one.i agree, and that is why i am a fan of sending files to my local lab and having them made into prints.
tangible is a good thing
Some parts of the world have climates that are kinder on photos than others.
In the rainer parts of the world where we actually experience all four seasons, mould is a real issue and if you keep your photos in a shoebox in the loft (which is as much care as most people ever thought to give them) they will rot. And Grandad's lovely camera? Likewise.
I will repeat what I said before: It doesn't matter whether you archive is film or digital, it takes care to ensure it will last. Some of us are predisposed to be better suited to one or the other but care is required regardless. In the early days of digital there have been lots of lost formats and obsolete storage solutions. Much as in the early days of film, when archived movies literally went up in smoke when the can was opened. Digital is becoming more mature by the day and storage and backup plans exist to ensure your important bits and bytes can survive. But it still takes a bit of thought and process. Carelessness will result in the loss of your stuff.
The photos my Mum took in the 60s have survived fairly well (black and white slides, colour not so much), the polaroids she took in the 70s? Gone. Faded to absolutely nothing. And the 1980s family photos? Pretty much all gone. We succumbed to the envelopes that fell out of every newspaper and magazine you bought back then and posted off our snaps to BonusPrint et al and got a lovely free roll of incredibly poor quality film back with our pack of poor quality prints. You can see where this is going... The photos got progressively worse and the quality of the prints is just terrible. Much worse than can be achieved with the most modest of smartphones...
For many of us on this forum we have to be good at both. How many copies of your digital photos do you have backed up? When was the last time you backed up your computer's hard drive? Did I wash and fix my last prints sufficiently? Are they going to fade as badly as my Mum's old Polaroids? Should I tone them in Selenium to better preserve them? Where are my negatives? What did I do with that shoebox full of Mum's old prints?
But fine art prints by professional photographers? Wow. Amazing. Fantastic quality and they potentially last a lifetime.
You can say what you like about digital but it's very democratising.
If you print with an inkjet printer on archival paper that print has a good chance of lasting as long as a silver print. It's pointless saying people don't print their photos. Many do. Just the same as many people lost their prints when the shoebox went missing when they moved house.
Digital can be just as archival as film. Film can be just as transitory as digital. There is one constant; People.
We are the weak link.
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