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Why Are We Wasting A Golden Opportunity?


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Ever since...ohhh...say 70 years ago, mankind has had the widespread ability to

record history on film. Whether it be family pictures, pictures of political

events, sporting events, news events or still life subjects. Especially more so

in the last 40 or so years and it gets easier and easier to put the history of

life on film.

 

But where is it?

 

Several years ago, I started noticing pictures from the 1950's and 1960's of

all sorts of events around the world, and often times, I noticed people with

cameras in the background. And ever since those days, more and more people have

purchased cameras, whether they be throw away disposable drugstore ones, or

high end professional digital cameras. And even though people have been taking

pictures for all these years, with all these cameras...where are all those

pictures?

 

For thousands of years, man has had some of the crudest methods of recording

history in picture-form. And now that its so easy and so widespread, you would

think that there would more care and more sharing and more emphasis on

preserving pictures (digital or film).

 

But people seem to have no problem throwing away their negatives, ripping up

prints, or deleting files of images from their computers.

I would estimate that about one tenth of one percent of all picturs taken ever

get shared with other people, let alone preserved in an arena where they can be

viewed if someone else wanted to.

 

Sure, not EVERY photo is worth its weight in gold. But why not use this

realtively new found method of recording history responsibly?

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<b>Craig</b><i>And even though people have been taking pictures for all these years,

with all these cameras...where are all those pictures? </i><p>

Craig, you are looking back to the era that fostered printed pictures without an idea that

the pictures might fade or go away. The people then were so enthusiastic about prints,

and so informed of archival qualities, and more importantly they were recovering from an

era from which many did not believe they would even survive! So pictures from that era

were a blessing.

<p>

Not much survived as the pictures and negatives went to storage, were retireved and

people went over them again and again and kept the prints and threw away the annoying

negatives they could not read. I am over sixty years-old and I remember my Mother going

through pictures and throwing away the negatives because she had the prints. Mother still

alive an looking at 100 years-old.<p>

There is a subtext here, Sir. American in particular don't look terribly far forward. They do

not know, or are not concerned about saving things. Americans had a certain optimism,

for better or worse - something I learned when I moved to England and then the

Continent.<p>

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'Ever since...ohhh...say 70 years ago, mankind has had the widespread ability to record history on film.'

 

I am of a similar mind to you in so much as I believe the true nature of photographs to be informative, in essence a documentary tool. However I am a little confused by your statements as to the useability of photography, which was perfectly accessible in the nineteenth century, especially after bromide came into the equation.

 

However, I do not believe that the opportunities thrown up by the ease and accuracy of photographical recording are being wasted. There are many wonderful examples of anthropological records, some of the best incidentally in the nineteenth century. I particularly appreciate the efforts of all the commercial photographers back in those days like James Mudd, Evelyn Carey, etc. as well as all those anonymous photographers who really did understand the importance of the camera. If you are interested in this issue you should perhaps really try to examine photographic herritage more vigorously, books are the best place to start.

 

'But people seem to have no problem throwing away their negatives, ripping up prints, or deleting files of images from their computers.'

 

I am sorry to say that this is their business and no one elses, you can't possibly expect to lecture them into keeping unecessary photos. If you take Robert Doisneau for example who wandered aimlessly around Paris taking photos and who used perhaps 1 photo per 5 rolls shot. If you insisted that all his contact prints and every negative frame be made public, the importance of each shot would be dramatically reduced, as would be the interest in his work. Every single person must have the ability to censor, the ability to decide whats necessary and what is not. That is more important.

 

'where are all those pictures?'

 

As a last point, you seem to be of the opinion that perhaps photography is not being used as furtively as it could. That there are perhaps not enough pictures of historical merit out there. Look around you and honestly say there aren't many photographs in the room you are in, be it in a book, on your computer or even the cover of food packaging. Our little world is absolutely full of images that say something about the time and the place in which they are produced and found. You just need to interpret and understand them. I urge you to keep your eyes open, your parents basement, jumble sale chuck outs and ebay especially. You would be amazed at what you find. I discovered recently that my neighbour owns the first ever Daguerrotype taken in England, with his great great grandfather in the picture, probably about 1941 (it just popped into a conversation).

 

I think what is a much more interesting and helpful way to approach the question is how can we make everyone else (the general public) appreciate the value of a photograph.

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All those pictures are now hosted on Flickr. You want posterity? You got it. Fifteen thousand fourteen year olds taking arm length self portraits, one every day, and posting them... have you inherited a huge pile of someone else's pictures? If you die, how many of your shots do you expect to be preserved in perpetuity? Sure, 20 or 30 that document something in common with someone you leave them to, but come on, all 15,000 frames? A photograph is common these days, and it's only worth what the viewer sees in it. This seems to me a rather pointless musing. You can try to define responsibly if you like. In 1,000 years, photographs taken today might serve as interesting relics, but today they're a dime a dozen (less if you're digital!)
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Craig, there is good news and bad news. First, the bad news: People just toss their pics, or more often, have them tossed when they die. Most people take pictures to use in life. When life ends, so does the need for the pictures. Most of them figure that their personal pics will have little value even to their own adult children, let alone posterity, and are correct about that.<p>

 

The good news is that the destruction process is not very efficient, there being many more important things to do. With a little digging in the places cited by Jonathan you can find a lot of old pictures. In some cases you will have to pay quite handsomely for them, especially the ones of something that anybody wants to look at.<p>

 

I had a <a href="http://www.photo.net/shared/community-member?user_id=2235861">good friend</a> die last year and moved quickly to save about 70,000 slides and negs he had taken over 58 years. I've had them for about eight months and have looked at every one of them, many more than once. I saved them because I liked the guy and I knew some of his pics have historical value now and some others will have it later. I will see that some of them get published where interested audiences will see them.<p>

 

These photos address a specific subject matter, and when I put out feelers in that community of interest, I got a pleasant surprise: quite a few others like myself had made a similar effort to preserve similar collections. It's not quite economical for all of us to get together and collaborate and share yet, but in the meantime, lots of people's pics are getting kept safe and sound. I think when it comes to amateur photographers who had artistic pretentions or specific photographic interests, this happens quite regularly. In other words, the raw material for a comprehensive visual history of just about anything since 1945 still exists and continues to accumulate. The pictures that have been discarded, really, are the family snapshots that don't really have much value except to show us 1950s fashions and that Mt. Rushmore looked about the same then as now.<p>

 

I'd like to save others' collections, but between this one inherited collection, my own stuff, and perhaps preserving the pics from a couple of prior generations of my own family, I don't have room for any more. I've done what I can. Even with all the pictures that have been destroyed, there are still way more to be preserved than there are people interested in preserving them. Start collecting pics now, make plans to see that they will be looked after when you finally punch your ticket, and in a few generations we or our heirs will be able to put something pretty cool together. Unless they just chuck the lot.

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Craig, I can't say I've ever seen anybody ripping up negs or prints. I have seen files being deleted.

 

The great family photo album is going to have a giant hole in it, starting about 2002. In the past, you'd take your kodak gold 200 to the drugstore and a few days later have an envelope of prints. Some would go in an album, some in a box, some would get mailed away. Some got trashed, too. But at least a few images make it through.

 

I work in an office full of women, and most have children. They have pictures up all over their desks. All printed on whatever computer paper happened to be handy. They say they have photo albums on their computers, which undoubtably will be in a landfill somewhere before 2010. Probably because something went wrong with it, and it would cost less to replace it. Everything is downloaded onto discs which never get labeled, and are put into a drawer until they are thrown out some years henceforth.

 

The idea that the common snapshot is some sort of historical record is inane. Most exposures never even make it to a tangible medium like paper. They get emailed and deleted to make room for more.

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In prosperous economies, more pictures are made today than ever before. If 1/10th of the

pictures are shared, then more are shared than ever before. <p>

Today instead of a single picture that will stand as a representation of a person for ten years,

there will be dozens or hundreds taken in the ten years. Is that a bad thing?<p>

In all, don't you think enough images will survive?<p>

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"The idea that the common snapshot is some sort of historical record is inane."

 

Inane? Rich. You must be kidding. What would people pay for the Bill Clinton family album? I know anthropologists who would kill for a tomb painting of some Egyptian wheat grinders family life. What is inane is to sign up for the old idea that history is written about the guy in the marble statue. On the other hand historians would love to have pictures of US Grant as a child. At the beginning of the civil war he was a shopkeeper in Galena. I had some people by the other day who were fascinated by the 35mm slides of life in the 50's. One was a professor who wanted to borrow some to illustrate a lecture. These were not readily available to him even though he had the resources of a major university at his command.

 

I don't call for a national snapshot repository. Nevertheless snapshots can be very valuable to historians in the future.

 

If there is a 500 year future one would expect that historians then to know a great deal about us. I do not believe this is a forgone conclusion. There are major motion pictures that have disappeared. We have very few pictures of slaves working. Try and illustrate a lecture on rural life in the Texas of the 30's.

 

I recently learned of a major collection of documents that exist about my family in the 1760 - 1880 timeframe. Everything from household accounts to slave purchases. From marriage records to military records. They are in the collection of a University in the South. I have ordered copies. I was told they were used frequently by researchers. And just because one rich little old lady in 1920 gathered up these old family papers and gave them to the school. And they contain snapshots of the forefathers of people who later became very famous. Who knew?

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"In prosperous economies, more pictures are made today than ever before..."

 

So, in this notion of Global Archive of All Photos, those from "prosperous economies" will dominate by orders of magnitude. Since they will have taken the vast majority of photos of non-prosperous economies, that means the future's view of those places and people will be conditioned by the perspective of those from the "prosperous" world.

 

Future historians can then study the imperialism of photography.

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Lee, I am referring to the the present, not the past.

 

I disagree that "more pictures are made today." Yes, more images are captured today, by orders of magnitude. But from what I can tell, they are being regarded as the ethereal, non-tangible, disposable things that they are. How many actually make into the form of a photograph?

 

Watch what happens when mom and dad are taking pictures at the birthday party. The party's not over, but the memory card is full. What happens next? Delete-delete-delete, ah, that's better! Archival properties have very little to do with whether or not an image will survive into the future.

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So, Craig Zander:

 

It would be very cool of you to pioneer the effort to overcome oversight and entropy.

Seriously. Take as many of your printed images or negatives as possible and seal them in a

US Army ammo can with dissicant and bury them far, far away so that they will survive.

Then get a good night's sleep.

 

I'm not kidding. I have done it. But then, I'm one crazy dude.

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This is a subject that has really concerned/intrigued/bothered me. I was lucky enough to inherit images of my family from the late 1800's and feel very fortunate to have them. But I wonder about the next 100 years and what will survive. Its not that the recording medium is any less permananent (ok you need to work a wee bit to achieve this 'permanence'), its that deleting stuff is so much easier. Ditch-it-all photography is how I'd describe it.

 

Ellis - "History is the interpretation of what happened, an attempt to put an event into context of other events. It's not the event itself." In light of this - have you seen the BBC production of Stephen Poliakoff's 'Shooting the Past' ? Worth a look, and quite thought-provoking if you ignore the obvious plot difficulties. Some viewers heated it, but I thought it rather well done. (BBC DVD 1327)

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"Sure, not EVERY photo is worth its weight in gold. But why not use this realtively new found

method of recording history responsibly?"

 

If you're looking for responsibly, it died in the fumes of the Daguerreotype. May we all hail a

new age of mercury intake?

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"This seems to me a rather pointless musing...", wrote Grayson. While entitled to our opinions, it always amazes me when people see what is important to another person as being nothing more than "pointless". If the topic posed was pointless, why respond? Perhaps to feel "superior"?
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"These hard drives will fail and billions of pics will be lost forever. The negative was a fool proof way of ensuring that the pic would last atleast a hundred years."

 

I have read reports by photographers who lost all their negs in the tragic floods in New Orleans but their digital media survived. I am sure there are stories of the opposite case also.

 

Like most people, I keep an offsite copy of my monthly system backup but not my old negs. How many people ever kept offsite copies of albums and negs unless they were professionals?

 

The preservation of any media whether digital or film based is a question of care. If the will is there to preserve images then extra care will be taken and the probability of preservation over many decades will increase. People will choose the highest quality materials/media/paper/inks etc and store all the material in such a way that it is secure and safe.

 

Future computers and digital storage media will change and people who care will transfer all their images to the new systems before recycling their old system. People who dont care, won't. It is not the fault of the media (whether digital or film) it is all down to the care the individual takes and their will to preserve this material.

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Last night I got into a conversation with a woman who now does video editing for the news deptartment of a local TV station. Before that she was a news camerawoman going back to the waning years of shooting film. It seems that they can find stuff shot in the past year at most. Everything else is stored in boxes, and for the most part not labled beyond having a year date. Nothing is cataloged. Younger employees wouldn't recognize any of the faces anyway. Management is talking about just trashing it all to free up the room. It's not just still photographs that are being lost.
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