DARK MATTER
On the 12th of April 2015 I attended Dark Matter: Photo Histories and Archives, a photography symposium at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Today, I discovered my scribbled notes in the back of a notebook (transporting me back to that orange carpeted lecture theatre). Here are some of the notable ideas raised:
- Everyone who photographs needs to deal with large numbers of digital files
- Multiplication of digital archives everyday
- Photography was made to archive us
- What is our motivation to record and disseminate photographs?
- What happens to photographs after Facebook?
- Obsolescence of technology
- A lottery, looking back – what has survived what has not?
- Are institutions responsible for archiving?
- Digital archives are inheritantly fragile
- Why do we want to keep hold of this stuff?
- The need to gather, in preparation for what?
- The easier to archive, the easier to throw out
- Compulsion to keep records
- Donation of photographs to public libraries
- People are carrying cameras twenty-four hours a day, everything is getting documented – who’s going to make it accessible in 100 years?
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