How could we mitigate alleviate barriers obstacles
to keeping conserving
our photographs for posterity?
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DO YOUR PHOTOGRAPHS HAVE NAMES?
I should be more specific. Do your digital photographs have filenames? Of course, by nature, they must. But, what are those files called? Do they have unique names, or simply the names generated by your camera? If you consciously name a set of files, do they all get the same descriptor, or are they each customised? Do you name your folders too? If you go to the trouble of naming your photographs I'd assume you also name your folders, but what do you name them?
I don't name my RAW files, I let the camera do that for me. Although if it allows I will choose to insert my initials into the filename. When, if, I save JPEG, TIFF or other files, I'll batch name the files "YYYYMMDD_Description_##" which translates to something like "20171202_Home_01" or "20180304_Posteritas_©ChloeFerres_01" although this is mainly for the benefit of family, friends or clients who I share photographs with.
But, no matter what, I always systematically name the virtual folders that contain my digital photographs. In my early days, that meant sorting photographs into folders like "Family" with subfolders such as "Chloe" or "Evie" (the family dog). As my photographs multiplied (and I learnt from professional photographers) this method proved to be chaotic and unsustainable. Over a decade ag...
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Description: "In A.D. 79, Mount Vesuvius erupted violently, spewing pyroclastic flows across the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. The eruption has become one of the most famous in history because the speed of the hot gases caught the locals unawares. The intense heat captured many features of city life, including individuals as macabre still-lifes. Much of this detail was then preserved beneath huge volumes of ash that rained down on the region. One of the discoveries made in 1752 in Herculaneum was of an intact library. This contained large numbers of papyrus scrolls of philosophical texts, many associated with the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus of Gadara. This is the only complete library that has survived from antiquity. And while many of the rolls were destroyed by workmen at the time and by scientists and archaeologists later, some 1,800 rolls survive, most of them in the Naples National Archaeological Museum in Italy."
Relevance: Today the scrolls are somewhat visible (mediated by technology) only because of their physical structure. "The material itself is built up from crisscrossed papyrus fibers that form a perpendicula...
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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.
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Title: Library of Ashurbanipal
Year: 7th Century BC
Description: "Late Babylonian clay tablet: table of lunar longitudes. Contains a table for the daily change in the duration of the visibility of the moon on the thirty days of the month of the winter solstice according to the tradition of the city of Babylon." From a series of cuneiform clay tablets excavated in Kouyunjik, northern Iraq, believed to be the remains of King Ashurbanipal (668-c.630 BC) of Assyria's great library.
Significance: These clay tablets have weathered thousands of years, and still retain enough information for us to read. How long will our modern tablets last? I suspect that the iPad I am typing on will not be able to show you these words in a few decades, let alone hundreds of thousands of years...
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The Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto exhibited Memory Unearthed: The Lodz Ghetto Photographs of Henryk Ross, buried in 1944, dug up in 1945.
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“I buried my negatives in the ground in order that there should be some record of our tragedy.”
— Henryk RossArtist: Stephen Gill
Year: 2006
Description: Stephen Gill created a photobook of pictures buried where they were taken."The amount of time the images were left underground varied depending on the amount of rainfall. The depths that the pictures were buried at also varied, as did their positioning. Sometimes they were facing each other, sometimes back to back or sometimes buried singly... Not knowing what an image would look like once it was dug up introduced an element of chance and surprise which I found appealing. This feeling of letting go and in a way collaborating with place — allowing it also to work on putting the finishing touches to a picture — felt fair. Maybe the spirit of the place can also make its mark."
Significance: The artist has introduced an element of chance, of manufactured wabi-sabi to his work. It is not the first time photographs have been buried...
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Artist: Dayanita Singh
Year: 2013
Description: "File Room is an elegy to paper in the age of the digitization of information and knowledge. The analogue photographer and bookmaker has a unique relationship with paper that is integral not only to the work of making of images, texts and memory, but also to a larger confrontation with chaos, mortality and disorder in the labyrinths of working bureaucratic archives in a country of more than a billion people."
Significance: Dayanita Singh's photographs of papers printed on beautiful matte paper and bound in a book is a cyclical celebration, as is much of her work including Museum Bhavan which repackages museums into concertina books or miniature museums which were subsequently exhibited in galleries and museums around the world. Her work is proof that the SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS + SEE MORE
Artist: Patrick Pound
Year: 2017
Description: "An avid collector, Patrick Pound is interested in systems and the ordering of objects: an attempt, perhaps, to make things coherent. As Pound says, ‘to collect is to gather your thoughts through things’."
Significance: Pound’s practice includes purchasing orphaned photographs on eBay, in his words, “photographers used to put photographs in albums and in boxes to be viewed and reviewed at will. Photographs were never made to be scanned and redistributed on eBay. Whether they are analogue or digital, printed photographs have an afterlife that no one saw coming.” His collections of prints, highlight clichés, in both subject matter and treatment of photographs, for example the destruction of people no longer wanted in physical memory. Through his work, Pound observes the ubiquitous changing nature of photography which, “used to be the medium of record. Now it is equally the medium of transmission.”
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A photograph is always of the past, therefore all existing photographs have survived to reside in the present future...
How can we ensure the perpetual existence of our photographs into the future? How could we mitigate barriers to keeping photographs for posterity?
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Conversations with my sister recently reignighted my role as family historian. It’s been more than a few years since I’ve actively researched ancestors, known and unknown — I was surprised at how quickly, and easily, I fell back down the rabbit hole, into a wonderland of information. I was particularly delighted to discover photographs I’d never seen, of relatives I’ve never met. While I do wonder about the joy these photographs bring me, I’m curiouser (and curiouser) about the journey of these photographs, from their past, into my future.
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Artist: Sarah Abad
Year: 2015
Description: "Whether a hand written note, a number representing the batch or the negative, the brand of the paper or the name of a photographic studio, each of these markings presents a story and are beautiful and fascinating in their own right."
Significance: Inspired by the discovery of a tin of old photographs in a garage, this book highlights the materiality of photographic prints, celebrating the often overlooked photographic vessel.
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Artist: Erik Kessels
Year: 2011-2014
Description: "Thanks to the wealth of image sharing sites and the availability of digital cameras, the world is subjected to an avalanche of new photos every single day. For ‘24 Hrs In Photos,’ a single day was chosen, and the images for that day printed out. The result were mountains of photos, reaching from gallery floor to ceiling."
Significance: A key issue I have independently identified is the abundance of photographs, a sea of information, and we’re barely keeping afloat. This work beautifully manifests the concept.
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What is so special about a shoe box that it has become a ubiquitous metaphor for the storage of photos? I don’t think I’ve ever stored photographs in a shoe box (postcards definitely — not photographs). I’ve known tins, bags, envelopes, albums, slide carousels and boxes of photographs to be discovered, but no shoe boxes, per se. Perhaps it’s because the boxes that come complimentary with your shoes are an ideal size for 6”x4” prints. But are there really shoe boxes of photographs out there? If you’ve got one stashed somewhere, please let me know!
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"It’s in a box somewhere… as most archives are."
– Dr. Kitty Hauser
HOW MANY PHOTOGRAPHS OF YOU HAVE EVER BEEN TAKEN?
Let's start at the very beginning, back in the good ol' days of film. A roll of 35mm film usually has either 24 or 36 exposures, so I'm going to assume an average of 30 photos per roll…
My dad is a prolific documenter of family life, so I'm sure there was more than a few photographs taken of my mum while she was pregnant with me (although can't recall seeing more than one), plus a roll on the day I was born, and at least another in the first month of my life. Let's say one more roll at my christening, and another as they tried to get the image right for my first passport. Add another three for my first overseas trip, one for my first christmas, and two for my first birthday. Let's say four rolls worth for the second year of my life and five for good measure for the third and fourth years of my life. Then my sister was born, queue two rolls, age four is also when started school, so I'm sure the fifth year of my life earned an extra roll for that, and another for my debut in school plays and ballet concerts. The next three years school years were probably equally eventful as kindergarten. The next year got more interesting, with a round-the-world family holiday, and I’m guessing that in itself was worth almost forty rolls of film, although most of the photographs we...
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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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It is an instinct to collect that draws me to photograph, collecting memories, places, and things. I can't have all things or be in all places, but I can always own a shadow of the real – as Susan Sontag wrote "to collect photographs is to collect the world."
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September 2011: The first memory I have of consciously taking photographs, rather than just happy snaps, occurs in Paris. Although disposable, my camera had three aspect ratios; standard, wide & panorama. This was new and exciting for me, before each precious exposure I made a careful decision, and subsequent composition. The memory of my nine-year-old self standing at the base of the Eiffel Tower – in awe – lining up my shot, is almost as clear as if I held that same camera in my hands today. The results were rewarding, especially after searching Paris to find a place that would develop and print my panoramas. Perhaps the great printing cost to my parents, who were probably wondering why they ever bought me a panoramic camera to begin with, paid off.
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— Walt Whitman
Is the photographic print still of significance in a digital age? (2014)
What are the implications of ceasing to print photographs?(2014)
What will become of our digital photographs if we fail to transport them into the world as objects in their own right?(2014)
Will today’s personal photographs will be preserved for future generations? (2016)
What are the merits of preserving personal photographs? (2016)
What’s the current state of personal photographic archives in Australia? (2016)
What photographic storage methods are available? (2016)
What threatens the future permanence of personal photographs? (2017)
Where/how do personal photographs currently exist? (2017)
Why future-proof personal photographs? (2017)
What value do personal photographs have? (2017)
In what states can our photographs exist? (2017)
What is the state of photo objects in our lives (2017)
How can we keep photographs? (2018)
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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!
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“There’s nothing that hasn’t been photographed.”
– Murray Fredericks (Nothing on Earth)
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 pub...
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— Evgeny Morozov (To Save Everything, Click Here)
“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...
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