RAMBLINGS

I been handed the baton of my own personal history. My whole life has been documented (mostly by my dad) — who am I to give up now, not everyone is given this gift. I have the resources, skills, knowledge, support and inclination to preserve life (preferably on paper) — my efforts are always appreciated, even by family and friends who are not driven to the same extremes...

For me, and for most of its existence, photography has been about preserving something fleeting — light as it is at a moment in time... Would we find William Henry Fox Talbot turning in his grave if he knew the abandons with which we now scatter our captured rays?

I admit, I too am careless with the shots I take, one hit wonders designed to service my immediate purpose, be it communication (with those distant in being but brought close by technology) or notation (despite the numerous writing instruments I carry with me at all times). I am trying to be more conservative and mindful (pardon the self-help buzzword) of the photographs I make. At one time every frame was made at great expense, today the cost for most people is negligible — we don’t need to wait until relatives die so they can sit still enough for the one portrait of them ever made in their lives (maybe I exaggerate). I have come to wonder what really is the point of preserving a memory in a photograph of the photograph itself is not destined to be preserved...

I am not ignorant of the offerings proffered to professionals and amateurs alike to back up their photos, from Drobo to Dropbox — yet still I don’t practice what I preach to an extent that alleviates my entropic anxiety. Now, I’m not saying I do nothing, definitely more than most... so, what do I do? Firstly, I take photos (if I didn't this whole point would be moot). I take photos with my phone — who doesn’t these days — and one of two instant (Instax) cameras, and my mirrorless ‘travel’ camera, and sometimes still a ‘professional’ DSLR camera (for special occasions). I started to use the instant cameras because it never felt like work for me, I love that it is an end to end process (no middle man/mini-lab/computer) — take a photo, hold a photo, see a photo, give a photo, all within a matter of minutes. I also love to shoot on my phone, but I love it a less — it’s too easy to make too many photos, then they must be edited, and in this day and age the compulsion to share propels the process along. However, after I’ve carefully edited and curated (to varying degrees) selected images for (multiple accounts on) Instagram, I let those digital files drop of my radar...

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I stopped writing to save and share photographs that I’d taken over two weeks ago when my nana turned 95. For most of those two weeks the photos lived on dual memory cards inside one of my cameras – what if my camera had been stolen? I finally got around to copying the photos to a laptop – what if my house had burned down? Those irreplaceable photographs would have been lost forever. I’d still have my memories of the day, and the photographs taken on my dad’s camera (and phone), but they wouldn’t have been as good as mine, the ones I imagine displayed in the homes of her children and grandchildren. So I convinced myself that I had to share these photos, and a family lunch would be my deadline. I saved about 150 photos on a USB drive to deliver to my dad – I know he’ll get around to printing them before I do, I bet he’s already printed his own snaps from the day, and not just copies for himself, but also for nana, and his sister, and even probably posted some off to distant relatives… At least I took an instant camera to lunch, now my sister (who missed the birthday celebrations) and I both have a tangible happy snap with Nana at 95 – she seems determined that it’s will be her last birthday, however we remain hopeful for a letter from the Queen, who herself would be 97 in 2023.

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The photographs on my phone are probably my most neglected memories, sure I return to them occasionally. But historically, every few months, when my iPhone storage was at capacity, I dumped all the photos into iPhoto, thousands upon thousands. Then, my husband made sure I bought a bigger phone – right now it has 13,894 images (mainly photos, but that includes 1,919 screenshots and maybe 588 moving pictures) in it’s ‘Camera Roll’ reportedly taken in 11,607 different places (from Johannesburg to Alice Springs)!

I wasn’t always aware I was neglecting photographs taken on my phone. But my dad was. I started to share phone photos on an anonymous travel blog, for the benefit of my parents, while travelling in 2011. When I returned from this trip, my dad suggested making a book, “it’s a blog dad – you don’t get it!” Eventually I succumbed to pressure, and printed “The Little Travel Blog” book, copying and pasting content for all 400 pages without further editing. That may have been the first time I had seen images from my phone in print (and apart from some regrettable editing decisions) they weren’t bad!

Nine blog books later, and I was bored, but had satisfactorily compiled snapshots from five holidays (along with occasional thoughts I’d shared along the way), as well as three books of snaps taken as I went about my daily life – some say the best camera is the one you have with you. I hate much new technology, but I forgive my phone for it’s habit forming ways because it enables me to always have camera at hand, ready whenever I am compelled to record.

My mum has always said I’m prolific. It took me a while to understand what that meant, but it’s one of my defining traits. I’ve dabbled in pottery as a child and an adult, I’ve never focused on making one bowl, I’ve always needed to make as many as a I possibly can – even if they not perfect, I’m driven to produce. This applies to collecting too, in fact please don’t ask me how many pairs of scissors in my collection, or how many rocks I’ve brought home in backpacks, or how many books don’t fit on my shelves.

I think it’s actually an instinct to collect that drew me to photography, as Susan Sontag famously wrote, “to collect photographs is to collect the world.” I’m compelled to record this fleeting life, not only through photographs, but also through objects – photo-objects are obviously the piece de resistance! I’m not just collecting objects, but the memories they embody, but also the stories they tell might to to a new admirer in the future… Perhaps someone one day will find my jars of travel mementos and pair them up with corresponding photo albums, imagining new narratives that I didn’t annotate for them…

But since 2013 the photographs I took on my phone have quietly sat on hard drives… when I realised this was their fate, I tried to shoot less on my phone. Which worked while traveling, but not in everyday life. Although I’ve developed a clearer aesthetic, which has enabled me to compile a zine with hundreds of ad-hoc images of my life. They evoke memories for me, but are really too abstract for anyone else to interpret. There's a gap in the documentation of my daily life, images exist, but no where that I revisit them...

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If I lost all my photographs, I would be devastated, but life would go on...

At one point in time I was probably about five years behind in the making of photo albums — albums from holidays existed in my mind and no where else, and most of those photographs existed on hard drives within my apartment and no where else. The risk was immense — one event could have been fatal to my archive. The catalyst to get on top of the backlog was a 50% off sale from my preferred photobook printer... I made albums quickly with the mantra “done is better than perfect.” I chose to forgo text (save for a destination and year on the spine) and kept the layout super simple, inspired by an album with sleeves for 6”x4” (this is a size I had grown up looking at photographs, any bigger and they would have been framed). So, now I’m on top of my personal photo album collection (although, I have only made albums for major events — e.g. my wedding and the holidays I’ve taken since. So, those photos of Nana’s 95th birthday have no home, and I’m also my goddaughter is not even featured in any of my albums, despite being one of my most treasured people! An new system will emerge... I hope it’s not too late! My dad doesn’t have this conundrum, he keeps chronological albums with family dinners, school plays, etcetera as well as seperate oversized albums for each overseas trip. And, since the photobook has become more accessible, he also makes me design print on demand albums for his overseas trips, but he’s not willing to let them replace his traditional — 12” black pages with sticky lines and a clear protective layer — albums.)

My commitment to backing up reached its pinnacle while I was a keen undergrad photography student — this was digital days, but not so far along that I would default to “the cloud” (In fact, I didn’t even have an internet connection at home in 2009!) I saved my files to my computer’s hard drive, not deleting them from a memory card until they were also copied to an external hard drive. Then, after narrowing a selection, and perhaps editing some, I would burn a DVD, and move these DVD’s off site periodically... I’m not sure I ever accessed those DVD’s, but about a decade later I probably could if I needed too.

An archiving decision I made early on in my career — when I realised I would be forever acquiring hard drives with double the space of the last — was to only migrate the highlights from an old hard drive to the new. This meant I didn’t copy across things I thought I wouldn’t want to see again, the jobs I didn’t personally value, or the hundreds of repetitive shots taken in a studio before final images were retouched in photoshop. So, I’ve effectively left superfluous files out in the cold, to decay as they will. Maybe they’re still on a hard drive, although I wouldn’t know which one (or where,) and have no inclination to search. (That old student work lives in physical, spiral bound, journals anyway, so my documented process of learning photography remains, even if ALL the digital files do not.)

I am also willing to ruthlessly delete photographs — I’ve already written more about that here. Although I’m a collector (read hoarder if you must) at heart, simultaneously trying to save everything while playing along with Kon Marie’s directive of keeping only what “sparks joy” — but really William Morris’ “have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful” is my motto, it tacitly approves of my instinct to collect.

So where do photographic possessions fit? In my home collection, ideally they are always beautiful, and I suppose occasionally useful, but we must also add evocative, for the lose ends that may be desirable to keep despite not being aesthetically pleasing or functional.

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Are photographs still life? Does life lie still in photographs? This life is not still. Photos are not still, they move through space and time with or without us, until they cease to exist at all.

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Photographs are a luxury item not a necessity.

Could I destroy all my possessions Michael Landy (that artist who in 2001 destroyed everything that he owned) style? For a compelling enough reason…if I really, really had to! But voluntarily? NO.

Are my photographs really for posterity or are they really just for me? Is it vainty and self-preservation that underpins my desire for photographs to outlive me, like commissioned painted portraits and statues of the past? Or is it a gift I want to bequeath to my descendants? What if I have no descendants, what should become of my treasured personal photographs? Would they obtain a cent at a deceased estate sale, or be tossed into land fill with my other seemingly worthless collections?

Remember Vivian Mayer, acclaimed documentary photographer, only made famous when her archives were purchased for peanuts posthumously. Do my photographs have the same significance? No. Do yours? Probably not in this age where photographs abound. So then what would happen to my photographs? I suppose I could donate certain photographic artifacts to relevant institutions in this life, if my goal were to increase my chance of visibility among those that life after me. But that is not my goal. I do not need to be remembered by those I do not know.

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I want people to question the fixity of their own photographs. I can’t provide all the solutions but I could I instil a sense of urgency and gravitas.

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In what ways do I keep my photographs for posterity? In what ways could I keep my photographs for posterity? Ways of seeing. Ways of keeping.

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April 28, 2018 by Chloe Ferres   Category:  SNAPSHOTS  Tags:  POSTERITY