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May 04, 2005
THE DIGITAL PICTURE ARCHIVE
dpexpert spends a lot of time thinking about the problem of the disappearing picture. You know the problem – inkjet prints fade quickly and hard drives fail and CDs and DVDs are unpredictable and sometimes cannot be read for no apparent reason. And "moth and rust doth corrupt and thieves break in and steal."
As if that were not enough to cause digital anxiety attacks there is the added problem of technology obsolescence. In a short slice of our lifetimes the 5 ¼ and 3 ½ inch floppies have come and gone. CD and DVD are about to be superseded by Blue Ray discs. In ten years time no one will have a drive that can read the archive discs. Does it matter?
The BBC reported recently that “some historians and archivists are concerned that the need for perfect pictures will mean that those poor quality prints which offered a tantalising glimpse of the past may disappear forever.” In other words we might be the first post-Daguerre generation to leave no informal photographic record of our life and times. Kodak is offering image storage to customers who buy their printing services, but what use is that? Who, in the next century, will go looking for pictures of Aunty Kylie in the Kodak vault, always assuming that it still exists and that Grandpa remembered to include the password and user name in his will?
It is a sobering thought that the lowest tech archiving solution, the good old silver halide print in the shoe-box time capsule, is still the most reliable archive of memories of times past, but it requires more conscious effort than in the past. In the olden days when the prints came back from the chemist they were looked at once, stuffed in the box and left there to be discovered amongst the effects of the Recently Departed. Digital photographers are going to have to start thinking of their posthumous responsibility to leave a pictorial family record, and the hard drive, CD, floppy and DVD are not the way to do it. Paper still beats all other media. What an amazing invention!
Are you making plans to pass on your photographed memories to the grand children? How do you plan to beat print-fade and media obsolescence?
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Posted by terry at May 4, 2005 08:57 AM
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Comments
I was poring through old photos and realised that the photos in best condition were the ones of my Mum and Dad as they got married. The photos are black and white, sometimes hand coloured. Later photos taken with the Kodak 127 Instamatic and 35mm Pax Ruby rangefinder were also doing well.
However from later 70s, the photos were in colour, C41 process and faded badly. We don't have to wait for digital formats to be incompatible, the common C41 print, processed in the millions by the neighbourhood processing outfits don't last either.
I'm not mentioning the Kodakchrome or the E6 slides - although they may store well in Melbourne, they were attacked badly by fungus in the humid tropics.
Posted by: Ananda Sim at May 4, 2005 07:57 PM