Hi, Friday, October 24, 2003, 6:35:23 PM, you wrote:
> On Fri, 24 Oct 2003, John Francis wrote: >> But what about long-time image storage? Well, what about it? >> I'm sure my mother-in-law isn't the only person who throws away >> the negatives and just keeps a handful of prints for a while. >> Photography isn't an archive medium for the masses - it's all >> about the moment. Filing negatives just isn't important. > I disagree with that statement. I've been to many family gatherings > that end up with people thumbing through 30-60 year old prints > (usually kept in a non-archival shoebox) and remembering relatives or > events. > I doubt that the negatives are around for many of these prints and the > quality of the print isn't that important, but people do keep them and > look at them. that tells us that the end product is not the negative, or the digital file, but the print. Even some professional photographers I know have not fully considered this, and haven't given any thought to the permanence of their prints. If I think of my own generation (i.e. people in the 40s and older) I know I have photos of my grandparents when they were children, which makes the photos about 100 years old, and I have a daguerrotype that must be considerably older. This ought to be the very shortest expected lifespan for a consumer print kept in a shoebox. I wonder how many modern prints, digital or otherwise, will last that long. If you want to be the Atget or Belloc of the next century, make sure your prints are archival. The famous photographers of our times will be the ones whose pictures survive! -- Cheers, Bob mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
