At family reunions, my mother used to proudly comment the family photo album in all it's nostalgic glory. But since the photographic digital age was thrust upon us like a starving vampire on an hemophiliac, we rarely see it anymore. The newest pictures are strewn across the computer landscape and rarely do we huddle next to a laptop to reminisce. What the fuck happened...? Black and white prints were for ever and conveyed more of a feeling than just the pixelized information of a person or a scene.
I still have excellent quality slides that were taken when I was knee high. Of course, I can't show them to anyone, projectors and screens having gone the way of the Dodo thanks to the digital revolution.
In all honesty there are some aspects of digital photography I really enjoy. Apart from the obvious low cost, there is also the availability of the images. Not having to shlep around to get film developed and printed is a big plus. On the other hand, I do miss the days of going to the photolab to pick up my work and talking shop. Somehow however I don't feel the same attachment to digital images as I did to film and prints. We are now literally flooded with images, left and right. They, the big digital camera makers, have made it so simple for the average Joe to capture an ok image, that it often lacks substance and depth. Shoot, shoot,shoot and you might get a good one out of the bunch. I read a quote from a National Geographic photographer who said...'' Film let's me be in the moment where as with the digital camera I'm always reviewing my shots'' . This happens to me all the time with digital....
Accordingly, few people have their images printed, let alone print their own. Maybe it's because they were so easily taken that they don't feel they're worth it..?
Most images stay on the computer until they're emailed or shared in Picassa or other and that's it. Do they back them up on a dvd or external drive? I suspect that '' I'll get around to it one of these days'' is the law of average for most consumers. A lot of pros and a few friends I know are meticulous about safe storage but their livelihood depends on it.
How many hard drives have crashed taking with them precious moments that were digitally captured. I for one have lost two huge hard drives in the last five years but luckily, most of my images were backed up.
Even backups on CDs or DVDs are an illusion of longevity. The U.N. in Geneva stores all documents on negative film for posterity having concluded that the digital mediums present a long term risk.
And what about the equipment....It use to be you would own one... possibly two cameras in your lifetime. And often enough they were passed on to siblings. Today, you're extremely fortunate if you're digital, battery hogging camera doesn't kick the bucket after 3 years or didn't become obsolete as soon as you left the store. With film, hit or miss, when your images or prints came back from processing, there was always some element of surprise, sometimes emotion and true, a lot of times grief if the images didn't turn out.... No more waiting or fuck ups....the image is already captured before you can even completely savor the moment. That is if all your settings are correct, it's not too cold or too hot, your batteries have enough of a charge, your flash card is not filled to the brim and there isn't an electric power station nearby dispensing an electro magnetic field to reek havoc with your camera's internal components.
I dread the day when we'll all be alzheimerishly looking for pictures of family and friends on a crash prone computer with outdated software to relive precious moments that would spur us in our final quest to crystallize who we were.
Thanks Kodak, Canon and Nikon for making the best memories of our lives erasable and irretrievable.
Footnote: This is my favorite family photo. It shows my great grandfather, his wife and their siblings sitting for a family portrait. I recuperated it by chance but doubt that this kind of happy hazard will occur in the future.
