Ephemeral Ephemera, To Be or Not to
Be
After
you cull through your photographs on the computer, how do you save them? Even
though it may seem, from what I’ve written, that I’m still married to film, I
probably haven’t shot a roll or sheet in 10 years. As a result, during this
past decade, I have begun to deal with and think about my ever-growing and
problematic storage issues.
Storing
photographic imagery has become both an issue of space and of time. I have
three fireproof file cabinets in my studio. They store all of the negatives,
transparencies and prints that I took from, roughly, 1975 to 2001. I have to
say, that although I didn’t scrimp on using film, I was more parsimonious than
I am now in the number of frames I shoot. Digital capture begs some degree of
overindulgence. Even so, one might think that the difference between a file
cabinet and a hard drive in terms of physical size is uncontested. A hard drive
obviously takes up less room.
With
film, storage space wasn’t my first concern; it was a fear of loss through fire
or earthquake. Our possessions are ephemeral and loss of all that we own is
always a possibility. However, as discussed in Frame 2, we know there is some
hope of being reunited with those magical scraps of paper memory. Where there
is material existence there is hope.
But
digital images have no material existence—Aye, there’s the rub. They are simply
electronic avatars of our momentary decisions. They are prone to the thousand
natural shocks that any electronic device is heir to: viruses, corruption and
crashes. Algorithms that reconstitute the images are contingent on
corporations’ willingness to keep them alive. That issue becomes the
major factor concerning timing. As consumers, how do we know when it is time to abandon what he have, for what will be? We are in the
terrible position of relying on companies to keep financially viable as they
integrate past technologies into the creation of some unknowable future
photographic product.
Obsolescence
has always been a part of photography’s technological evolution and is applicable
to every chemical and paper/glass/metal media that photographers have embraced.
I think that the main difference is in knowing that the chemicals and
substrates that photography has depended on for the past 173 years are still available.
They may be used for other things, but the ability to appropriate them to
remake photographs is possible. Negatives will always be printable.
By
using digital photographic media, we are in the unfortunate position of keeping
a step ahead of the devil. What happens when Adobe files bankruptcy (think
Kodak) and their RAW processing formats are gone, or your new camera’s software
will no longer convert 10-year-old files? Will you make sure that your
computer’s OS can still read the format that your files are saved in? How long
will JPG and Tiff files be the formats of choice? How many times will we keep
having to resave our images onto new hard drives with the latest connectors
(think SCSI)? What if we save them on DVDs and computers no longer read DVDs
(think floppies and Zip Drives)? Do we have the time or energy to stay current
with each technological change or will our enterprises turn awry and thus lose the
name of action?
Tell me what you think
Frame
6A
Addendum:
