I would expect that most people in the developed world are well aware of film and what it is. Many of the younger kids, and maybe even some teens at this point, might be scattered mostly around the 'vaguely aware' to 'never seen film in person before' groups. But I have met many photographers who had never before seen 120 film, and comments of "Oh wow, they still make film?" are not remotely uncommon in my experience.
People who don't have a vested interest in using film or otherwise caring about it aren't going out of their way to think about it, probably much in a similar way as most people think about 'vacuum tubes' (or 'valves'?). If you know anything about them then you were either alive during the period where they were in common usage, or you're some manner of tech head, but otherwise odds are your knowledge or ability to care about them doesn't really extend beyond them being "Those weird lightbulb things on old timey computers in movies or TV, or on old radios, or amps." - If you don't have an interest in them, then you're not going to really care or look into the current market of something, and won't have any real knowledge of things if it isn't something that is right in your face or covered in the media.
To many the most recent big news they've seen in the media was Kodak 'going under'. Doesn't take a genius to put two and two together; Kodak going under, never really seeing anyone using or talking about film... Obviously they don't make it anymore, right?
Or you die and there is no one around to refresh the files on a regular basis or migrate the files to new formats or new media.
Prints and negatives can live in shoe boxes unattended to many decades. Do not try that at home with your digital data.
And anyone should care about that, why exactly? If no one cares enough about the data to keep carrying it forward, then the data probably didn't matter all that much to begin with.
I'm still in my early 30s, and the files I care the most about are in the hands of people I trust to handle them going forward if I get hit by a bus tomorrow. My collection of negatives will be handled by some photography friends. In all honesty I have far greater hopes that the majority of my important files will survive centuries than I do any of my negatives.
There is another "Generational thing" that I think may have gotten overlooked in this conversation: Minimalism.
The future generations coming up after all of us? Even my own generation? They wander around with a device that easily holds all the informational content of the library of congress in their pocket. Photos are things they look at on a phone or a computer screen, and only
really good or important ones are worth spending the time and effort on creating a physical version. "Things" take up space. "Things" need to be moved. "Things" cost money that could be better spent on "Events" and creating memories.
Of course we
like physical things. We have stuff, we fill our homes with things we enjoy, but we're also far more willing to part with 'stuff', and the physical items in and of themselves really aren't super critical in life.
The feelings and emotions of a thing seem to be becoming far more prized than the thing itself as compared to impressions given by some previous generations. This is kind of highlighted in how people are viewing the entire concept of photos.
If I have to select one photo that I care the most about it would likely have to be a photo of my grandfather standing by his tank somewhere in Europe. The copy I have is not the original. It is not the first print of it. It isn't even made from the original negative, but rather a scan of an old print one of my aunts made for all the grandkids, and it is one of the very few 'things' that is allowed to take up physical space in my life.
But in all honesty I really don't care about
that photo. That is to say that I don't care about the paper, the wooden frame, and the bit of glass. I care about seeing my Grandfather in his prime standing in front of his tank posing for a photo. I care about the information shown, the memories of who he was, and all that the image represents, as does my family. And that is why copies of it exist as physical images in more than a dozen homes across Canada. Digital copies also exist in most of them, and on servers scattered around the globe, and stored away on redundant archival tape drives.
If my home burns down tomorrow I am not going to think about that framed photo hanging on my wall. I'll have far more important things to worry about. However in a month or two after that I'll have another copy of it. A black wooden frame with a crisp white matting and anti-glare uv protective glass, or whatever the sticker I probably won't read and just peel off says. I'll have somewhere else to live, and the photo I love will be back on the wall where it belongs. Not because the physical item itself had any meaningful value. - It was paper, and dyes or pigment arranged in a specific fashion, and millions of them could have been made.
I'm sure some users of this site would find that heartless and somehow insane, having so little care about a photo. But the key to it is that even after my house burned down and even if I lost every personal possession I might own, I can still have my home and the photo I care about, because I cared about what the content was, what it represented, and not about the thing itself.
Now continue that line of thought, and consider how mobile my generation has been, and how mobile those following me are likely to be. You are trusting your shoe box of photos to a generation who can have three jobs in three different cities across a country as large as Canada, all in a single year. My generation is
not the generation who got a job sweeping floors at the local factory right out of high school, and then stayed working different jobs in that same building for 40 years before retirement. Mine is the generation of the mobile professional.
We roam.
And you know what?
We like it. We aren't living in the 50's or 60's. We aren't even leaving friends behind while we roam. One of my best friends is currently living in New Zealand, and having a blast. I was going to say that we might not be able to sit down and have coffee together easily, but then I realized that we actually
did. The coffee didn't come from the same pot, but I sat there drinking coffee with them a few hours ago and had a great conversation with them.
So what do we have today? We have a growing generation of mobile professionals building communities spanning the globe. A generation who apparently is more likely to live out of a small apartment and move everything they own, or everything that they at least keep, in the back of a car when they drive to a new city than they are to own their own 4 bedroom house.
And people honestly believe a "Shoebox of old photos" is going to be safe with these kids? Are you really so confident in us that you truly trust us to be the custodians of such things?
- Among my peers I'm apparently an oddity for living in the same physical structure for more than five years, let alone living in the same city for this time frame. I've already gathered a small stack of shoeboxes of "Family photos" - Asked by friends to scan them rather than risk the photos getting lost when they moved out west with two suitcases, to the states with a jeep already stuffed to the gills, or off to Thailand with a backpack smaller than I foolishly took with me on weekend hikes as a Boy Scout back in the day.
The very important thing here is that most of those shoeboxes in my closet? Those aren't photos of
my family. I have no strong compelling reason to care about them, and the only reason why I still have them is that I still somewhat care about physical artifacts even if they're not exceptionally important to me. But honestly the biggest reason is that I don't really have a compelling reason to get rid of them yet. They'll get passed back to their rightful owners if they ever move back to town, and I have no pressing need of that bit of closet space at this time.
But a company out in Vancouver has floated the idea of me possibly joining them later this year for a new project. What exactly am I supposed to do with those shoe boxes of other people's family photos then? If I take the job and move there I will
not be paying the insane price of moving
all the contents of my place across the country. A few bags of clothes are going with me. My laptop and all my hard drives are getting boxed up and coming, but the rest of the computers and monitors (IT professional, computer gear multiplies at an alarming rate) are being sold or given to friends. I'll box up my father's tools and maybe his cast iron frying pans and eat the parcel post fees for all that. The camera gear of course, at least the "Price Dense" stuff like the actual cameras, flashes, and such, but light stands, modifiers, and the bin of "stuff" will scatter to photography friends here, and I'll buy new bits as needed, if needed, when I'm out there.
My negatives and such will of course come along for the trip. But everything else I own will be sold, given away, or otherwise 'left behind' when I go, and all without me having any worries about it.
The physical things that I truly cherish but can't reasonably take with me will be passed on to friends and family here, in the same way that much of it came into my possession in the first place.
The physical copy of the photo of my grandfather that is on the wall right now? It might go in with the clothes if I have the space. Or a new copy might be made to hang on the wall when I get out there. I'll honestly be rather indifferent as to which option I go with, and will only care that I have 'that' photo on my wall.
So where do those shoe boxes of old photos from friends fit into my moving plans? - The answer is very short and rather blunt: They don't.
Now that I think about it I have to say that the "Shoe box of Photos" that "Survives forgotten on a shelf in the back of a closet" of my generation is the "[Friend's name]'s Junk" folder sitting on my computers and in my backup files. I haven't looked at some of those folders in years. Their checksums all match up. Decades of data management tool development all say they're stable and intact. The files are guarded against bitlocker or other data attacks better than my physical photos are guarded against burglary, arson, or just a pipe bursting. I honestly forget most of what's in those folders, but I'm more confident that they're safe and in good shape than I am of what is in those shoe boxes of photos in my closet that I haven't opened in years.
I could delete those friends junk folders. I could free up a bit of space and never worry about them again, but honestly data storage is cheap, and they're a small enough fraction of my own data that seriously kind of less worry to just not worry at all about them. The photos and documents in there are going to stay there. They're in the archive. I glance at them every few months out of habit when I skim through things to make sure all the computer systems are in check and nothing has broken, but they'll otherwise keep getting copied. They'll keep being dragged forward through my modern technological life mostly
because they take me just as much effort to throw out as they do to keep.
Other copies of them exist with other people. Our data is becoming more and more searchable as well. We're tagging people. We're keywording. We're sorting, cataloging and collecting. When something happens to make us wonder about old photos, we search. We don't search though old boxes that we have to go dig out of the back of a closet, we pull out our phone or or laptop and look things up there, and find the things we have in mind in minutes regardless of where we are in the world.
Actually at this point they effectively take
more effort to throw out, because I would have to go hunting and jump through hoops to delete them, because the entire system is setup to avoid the data being destroyed.
But as far as all the physical photos I have here with me? I'll care about
my photos. The things
I created.
- Those shoe boxes of photos from other people's families? My friends have everything
they care about from them already. Those shoeboxes are just things, photos of people I don't know for the most part, have never met, and have no real need to care about. They've become bits of paper sitting there, existing and taking up physical space, and left behind by their proper owners who have every bit of them they need in their pocket right now.
I likely won't throw those shoeboxes out. If I move here later in the year I'll likely pawn them off on another friend who has the needed storage space in a closet they're not using. If I stay, then the physical photos will keep sitting there in their boxes for awhile yet. Beyond that? Well I have no idea. The information contained in them has been copied, and is safe. The
information on them is what was cared about by the owners of those photos, not the bits of paper they came on. Maybe a nice enlarger or something will get dropped off on my door step and need closet space to live in.
That turned out far longer than I was expecting when I started writing a quick reply, but was actually rather fun to think about and explore.
The Too Long, Didn't Read version for anyone in a hurry:
- Lots of young people care about information, memories, emotion, and feelings more than they care about specific physical things.
- Lots of young people move a lot, as such lots of young people keep very few physical things to make moving easier. (Is also easier to keep a place neat and tidy if it didn't have much in it in the first place.)
- To lots of young people something physical must be exceptionally special or important to them for it to reliably remain in their possession long term.
- Lots of young people hoard data and store lots of it because doing so is cheap and easy.
