TANGIBLE/INTANGIBLE

Some photographs are tangible – you can touch them, perhaps even hear or smell them, taste them if you really want to, visible with nothing more than a naked eye.

Others are intangible – you can't hold them, and they are only visible whilst being viewed on a screen, decoded by software, reliant on hardware, powered by electricity.

THIS IS PHOTOGRAPHY

The distinction between analogue and digital photography has faded. While the processes remain distinctly different, we live in a hybrid world. Film is scanned and Instagrammed. Pixels are printed – I can even use my phone to expose instant (Polaroid) photographs.

As I look holistically at photographic practices, the words analogue and digital have become somewhat redundant distinctions. It doesn't matter how a photograph was made, just that it was made.

“there is simply no equivalent of the permanently archived, physically unique photographic negative. Image files are ephemeral, can be copied and transmitted virtually instantly and cannot be examined (as photographic negatives can) for physical evidence of tampering. The only difference between an original file and a copy is the tag recording time and date of creation – and that can easily be changed. Image files therefore leave no trail, and it is often impossible to establish with certainty the provenance of a digital image.”

365 WAYS TO DESTROY A PHOTOGRAPH

Artist: Anonymous

Year: 2014

Description: "Beginning on July 25th, 2014, one photograph will be destroyed each day for a period of one year. The remnants of every photograph will be collected, documented, saved, and exhibited at the conclusion of the year." Although the project appears to have been abandoned on day 72.

Relevance: This systematic destruction of physical photographs reveals what remains after deliberate destruction. To me, destroying digital photographic data seems like it would more finite – data you've handed over to someone or something else is a different story.

DESAPARECIDO / LOST

Context: The alternative to preserving photographs, is to lose them. What does a book of lost photographs look like?

Aim: To visually represent the absence of lost photographs.

Precedent: Will Steacy's Photographs Not Taken (book cover pictured above), perhaps the only photography book I’ve bought that is entirely devoid of photographs, is "a collection of photographers' essays about failed attempts to make a picture…These mental negatives depict the unedited world and the moments of life that do not exist in a single frame." In a different vein, I have also previously created a photobook devoid of photographs, 2nd’s, after I discovering a dusty box of slides marked 2nd’s. Inside this box I found empty slide mounts along with what appeared to be accidentally mounted frames from the end of rolls of film, partially exposed, partly blank, yet curiously interesting.

Method: I began by thinking about my own experiences with lost photographs, in particul...

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WHAT DOES A DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPH LOOK LIKE WHEN NO ONE IS LOOKING AT IT?

Like a million pieces of chocolate sent via Wonka Vision, waiting to be recalled, reunited, and consumed – thanks to the imagination of Roald Dahl!

DIGITAL BLACK HOLE

“If there are photos you really care about, print them out,” internet pioneer Vint Cerf once told The Guardian, “we are nonchalantly throwing all of our data into what could become an information black hole without realising it. We digitise things because we think we will preserve them, but what we don’t understand is that unless we take other steps, those digital versions may not be any better, and may even be worse, than the artefacts that we digitised, if there are photos you really care about, print them out.”

His words echo and validate my own sentiment over the past few years.

The digital universe is a scary, albeit brilliant, place.

Post Script — I feel a book of black holes opening up...

WORTH IT

"That is the most important book you will ever make." Dan Milnor recalls telling a Blurb customer in response to the realisation that books could be a vessel for family photos, not just a commercial enterprise. “I can make a book for my family. I can use the photos we’ve had our entire lives.”

It begs the question, what makes a family photobook gift worthy, while a family photo Dropbox account isn’t a present worth sharing?

THIS PHOTOGRAPH HAS BEEN DELETED

Yes, you read that right — I uploaded this photograph privately to Pinterest, then I deleted it.

When I hit delete I was told “you won’t be able to get it back,” before confirming my intention, again hitting delete. The fact you can see this file at all means, theoretically, that all private uploads to Pinterest are public (if you can find them). While I don’t know how long this photograph will last on a server somewhere in the world, I thought I’ll leave it here (as a linked image), and together we shall see!

Post Script — the words in this photograph are by the inspirational picture book maker Oliver Jeffers and Austin Kleon, from whose blog you too can download Read a Book Instead for your screen.

HOW TO SEE A PHOTOGRAPH

At some point, before we can see a photograph, the light we've captured lies dormant in darkness. We require chemistry or electronic technology to make photographs visible.

Once a photograph is made physically visible, as a negative or print, it requires nothing more than light for us to see it. Digital photographic files rely on ongoing intervention in order to be visible — is a digital photograph still a photograph when it’s not being viewed on screen?

When digital cameras were developed, many that argued that digital photography was not true photography. That's changed, so have our dictionaries to reflect evolving language — you'd have a hard time finding someone today that denies a digital photograph its name. While the file may be different from the photograph, they remain inseparable, just as printed photograph is bound to the paper it is printed on.

THE PROVERBIAL CLOUD

Let me begin by saying, the cloud is not actually a cloud, nor is it in a cloud — shocking, I know!

You’re probably wondering where it is then, well, it is right here on earth, so more of a fog, really — a mass of data storage near the earth’s surface. This fog hovers in data centres (which I understand to basically be buildings filled with hard drives), and there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of data centres around the world.

While I was wondering where photographs stored in the cloud really are, I started marking data centre locations on a map, until I quickly began running out of room, but I think you get the picture — your pictures could be almost anywhere on earth (but as far as I can see, probably not Antarctica)!

For a more expert, yet accessible, understanding you could read Cloud Computing by Nayan Ruparelia. And, from now on, let us be sure to think of the cloud as a physical storage location, not simply a dreamy, untouchable haven.

MOVE TO TRASH

B-sides, seconds, outtakes, rejects, duplicates, bloopers, mistakes, failures, accidents, out of focus, poorly exposed, boring, unsatisfactory, unacceptable, uninteresting, unflattering or indecisive moments — we’ve all got them, but what do we do with them?

Do you archive them anyway, because the cost of digital storage is negligible? Or do you delete them, if you feel certain they don’t need to see the light of day?

Admittedly, my approach is ad-hoc and non-committal. Sometimes, I delete photographs from my digital camera, if I can clearly see that the photograph is not one I want to keep (although it's not always easy to judge on a small screen). Once I've copied all photographs onto a computer, I usually view them in Lightroom. When I come across a photograph that inspires me to hit delete, a dialogue box pops up asking if to "delete the selected master photo from disk, or just remove it from Lightroom?" The options are to 'delete from disk' or 'remove' — my response is a coin toss, but either way, I will not return to the dismissed digital file again...

In Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age, Victor Mayer-Schönbe...

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FACEBOOK, FRIEND? FOREVER?

Facebook allows users to store an unlimited number of high-resolution photos — over 350 million photos are uploaded per day. Sure, you may be happy to give Mark Zuckerberg a royalty-free, worldwide licence to your intellectual property, and apparently “you can delete your account any time” But, is there something you’re missing? And, “what will happen to your Facebook account when you pass away?” Yours, not mine – I don’t have one.

INSTAGRAM IS NOT A BACKUP SERVICE

Instagram has over 800 million accounts globally — I wonder how many of those users read the Terms of Use before proceeding:

“Instagram encourages you to maintain your own backup of your Content. In other words, Instagram is not a backup service and you agree that you will not rely on the Service for the purposes of Content backup or storage. Instagram will not be liable to you for any modification, suspension, or discontinuation of the Services, or the loss of any Content.”

Where else is your Instagram content stored? Also, when was the last time you read the terms and conditions of any online service before accepting them?

TO KEEP, OR NOT TO KEEP?

In Known and Strange Things, Teju Cole reflects on a discussion about photography with an anonymous acquaintance who agreed that “what was important was the possibility of retention, not the actual retention itself."

The emerging trend of photographs taken with no intention of retention — proliferated by apps like Snapchat — was an affront to my photographic sensibilities. My innate belief was that the purpose of photography was to make fleeting moments visible for future time, and I could not fathom premeditated deletion. Nor, I’m sure, could those who pioneered photographic technologies and techniques for fixing the shadows (see also) to surfaces for future viewing.

However, gradually I made new observations about my own photographic habits, discovering that in fact, I did take photographs I had no intention of retaining — I did not actively discard them, but nor did I actively keep, store or care for them. Certainly, I do not need to k...

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