The years of 2000-2020 will be the lost generation of photographs

[jcoffin]

<p>A greater percentage of current photographs will be lost -- but the drastically increased number will outweigh that, so there will still be more photographs saved. More importantly, a much larger percentage of the ones that are saved will have meaningful metadata attached, so they'll continue to have at least a little meaning.</p>

<p>Most photographs tend to be of people, and most of what gets recorded about them are the identities of those people. After two or three generations, most of those identities have little meaning unless one of the people happens to have become famous. On the other hand, simply having an accurate date on the picture means in a few generations, somebody who cares about fashion trends (for example) can derive meaning from photographs without knowing or caring much about the people who happen to be wearing the clothes, or who had those types of haircuts, or whatever.</p>

[marc_bergman1]

<p>Here is an article related to this discussion.</p>

<p>http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/142366</p>

<p> </p>

[ryanjoseph]

<p>Daniel, you actually make a very good point. Digital is not inherently a more perishable media than film, but film in itself without work is more archival. I backup my pictures on two sets of DVDs stored far apart from each other. . I work with computers all the time, the concept of backing up is completely foreign to most people. The HDD dies? Oops there go all my pics. That would have happend to my sisters pictures if I didn't save them for her.<br>

We can't rely on the internet for to much, it is inherently not a super archival place. Sure some things survive, but how many other websites fade into obscurity, not saved by the internet time machine?<br>

Film being a physical media at least has some chance to survive. Slides I just tossed in my closet, and provided the house doesn't burn down will always be there. Thats how I found a virtual treasure trove of family pictures once, stored in my grandpas basement. We will likely lose the vast majority of current photos, but something out of those petabytes of data will survive in the digital world.</p>

[piotr_smolanski]

<blockquote>

<p>Also, how many prints and negs are stuffed into shoeboxes and shoved into closets, never to be seen again until the person dies and the non-valuables are thrown out?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>And then someone finds such a box, his jaw drops and hundred year old photos are showed to the world. Please have a look here:<br>

<a href="http://www.gurdowa.pl/">http://www.gurdowa.pl/</a></p>

<p>Now, just think - how likely would this be to happen with a HDD found in a box?</p>

 

[dbcooper]

<blockquote>

<p>"...there is a coming blank slate in human experience...dramatic, but perhaps very true."</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>I think it's the opposite - too much will be and is being saved. As already mentioned, <em>once an image is online</em> , it's likely to survive somewhere or other. To me, it's rather like all the miscellaneous junk on one's hard drive, just loads more of it. Online, it just keeps accumulating and accumulating over multiple server RAID arrays, etc., gifs get converted to jpegs, and so on.</p>

<p>I learned a very hard lesson losing art, historic, and memorabilia photographs due to Hurricane Katrina. Fires, tornadoes, floods, earthquakes, theft, vandalism, etc., <em>all happen.</em> Few plan adequately - most people think these kinds of things won't happen to them, it's always someone else. If you think hard or digital copies of photographs are safe at home, think again. Redundant remote (e.g. online) storage is a huge advantage for the safekeeping of images and other important documents.</p>

<p>Misfortunes aside, no matter how well you treat/store film and prints (of any kind), they have a finite life span. Just like our own lives; while there is some extendability, mortality is inevitable. Digital storage/archiving is fast, convenient, and takes up much less space. With digital, <em>all</em> of the family can have a print of their great-grandma, and maybe yours, too. :)</p>

[steve_swinehart]

<p>Bad news....there's already been several generations of photographs lost ...all of the early color film + prints from 1942 through 1953 are totally gone...faded to oblivion.</p>

<p>The color materials after 1953 were somewhat more stable - but, even those only have a real life of 25-30 years. Then there was the Agfacolor debacle of the 1980's where the prints had a life of 4-5 years. Many professional labs used the Agfa products because of the low cost. Wedding and portrait photographers used professional labs that printed on the Agfa material - all those photographs are totally gone. The poor image stability resulted in a class-action lawsuit againts Agfa.</p>

<p>And so you think that image preservation is a new problem and that there is a "coming blank slate" because images are digital - what about all of the images lost because they were on color film and paper? The world hasn't stopped, people aren't rioting in the streets - in fact, it's all gone by with little or no notice. That's exactly what's going to happen in 2020 with digital images (or lack there of) - but, you do know the world is supposed to end in 2012?</p>