[Leica] Photogs in a Digitally Abreviated World

[tedgrant at shaw.ca (Ted Grant)]

Dante Stella offered a wonderful piece of reality!!!!!!

Subject: Re: [Leica] Photogs in a Digitally Abreviated World


> Let me offer a different perspective.  Archival life does not matter while 
> you are alive, because you can always make more prints.  Or scan negs or 
> whatever.  Nor does it matter after you die.
>
> Let's start with the brutal truth.  No one will care about 99% of your 
> (anyone's) pictures when you are gone.<<<<<<<<

Hi Dante,
Right on the mark and so truthful an opening comment as I've ever seen on 
the importance of archival processing and requirements!!

I laugh at some of the people on list and many others over the years going 
on about "the archival preserving of their images for ever and forever!" 
Then when you see the pictures it immediately evokes a one word question, 
"WHY?"

I mean who the hell do these people think they are about preserving their 
photographs way beyond 100 years? And yes that includes my work as well and 
I've photographed some pretty powerful folks, but so what? Of all of the 
pictures and moments, thousands and thousands there's probably a few 
pictures at best worth saving for the future, well Ok for the next few years 
so they'll have a few to run with my obit!

>Look in every antique store that has a box of old family photos for sale. 
>Bet the people in them were glad they spent a princely sum of money on a 
>photograph.  I have seen enough deaths in my time to know that photographs 
>are among the things that get weeded through, if not pitched.<<<<<<<

An interesting observation. When people are questioned about what did they 
save as they escaped a burning home, quite often answer... "we grabbed our 
photo albums and money!"  And this is a pretty standard answer asked of many 
survivors. And yes at the time.. "in their lives" the pictures are truly 
important. However, after they're gone an offspring may keep them around for 
a while, but eventually the albums go into a box and are shuffled from space 
to space to eventually?  You guessed it.. the re-cycle bin!

So much for the great amount of time, cost and archival preserving and 
processing!

> What good will your selenium-toned, acid-free fiber-based prints be when 
> your widow/er or survivors throw them out?  What about when they are 
> banished to a basement or attic to be discovered two generations later, 
> and no one can make any sense of them?<<<

Again score this one big-time when people come across boxes of "ordinary 
folks" pictures. And in many cases very well organized complete with names 
and everything else about who the people are or some of them anyway. "Oh we 
don't need to keep this stuff any longer, turf it, we got too much junk 
around here as it is!" Gone to re-cycle!

The sorry apart about this is, everyone on this list is an "archivist" of 
our times, whether their pictures are good, bad or plain old fashion happy 
snaps. The pictures of cities, name locations and many many other infinite 
subjects are about our times, the times of the people whom we worked with, 
visited with, our towns.

Example.

Sonny's "establishing shots" of the past few days in his home town. First of 
all the town itself is important.......... Natchitoches, Louisiana, Oldest 
continuous settlement in La Louisiane<<<<< So that means almost any pictures 
of things, people and happenings in that town are very important and worth 
archival processing and preserving. Does it happen? Probably some, but I'd 
put money on it that most folks in that town are much like the rest of 
us..... "it's worth keeping them old albums until pappy finally goes."

> The events of your life live only in your memory.  Likewise, you only 
> leave a legacy in other people's memories. Although they might be of some 
> sentimental value to your family, your photographic works will only live 
> on through being great.<<<<<<<

And extremely few are great!

> If your photographs are masterful, incredible works of art, rest assured 
> that people will take care of them - and make use of them - long after you 
> are gone.  When you see him, ask Ansel Adams. <<<

And that's why I say there are few "greats." They certainly are few and far 
between in all disciplines of photography. Yes many of us can rattle off a 
few names.

> I would not be worried about negative life, print life, anything.  People 
> in the future will find a way to do what they need to do to preserve the 
> materials.  If your photographs are mediocre, there's no need to worry at 
> all.  They'll probably only outlast you by a month.<<<<

If we are lucky and by that time we wont need to be concerned about it! ;-)

I never put much into this archival stuff anyway, cause most of what I saw 
people going on about saving were pictures of rocks, ferns, peeling paint 
and non-breathing things that in a hundred years or more would be still in 
the same condition as they were in the pictures taken last week. So who 
cares! ;-) Well Ok that's me as you folks know me.

But I've got prints kicking around here, 16X20's that have to be 45 years 
old easily, if not more and they still look pretty damn good without all 
this extra processing and preserving. Yep some are from times and places 
that don't exist any longer. But I'm not wringing my hands at whether 
they'll survive another 50 or so years, heck let some one else do that later 
as I've got too many places to go and too many things to photograph yet with 
my Leicas and .... ;-) OK I wont say it... that electronic thing. ;-). :-)

Dante my friend thanks for opening this topic as I'm sure it'll lead to some 
very interesting conversation.

ted