I never gave any thought about what happens to my pictures after I’m gone. I have physical albums going back to the 1940s and I was raised in the film generation. But now, except for big prints on my walls, all my photographs are in electronic files. Which I maintain and have backed up on external drives … but after me? I have no idea what will happen to the pictures. If the Internet persists, a large number will live on, anonymously, on websites … but otherwise … it will be like the 110,000 pictures in my libraries will have never existed. That’s a startling and upsetting thought. This is a thought-provoking and relevant post we all need to think about.
Cameras.
They’re everywhere. In your phone, on your tablet, you have your point-n-shoot, and maybe even a DSLR. A few might even own a film camera. You can’t escape the selfies, Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook. People are deluged with photographs. And today, people are taking more pictures than ever before. It’s been estimated that in the past 5 years, more photos have been taken than all the prior years combined.
The sad part is that few of these photographs will survive beyond a year. To many people, a “picture” is only good for the moment. Moms and Dads want to snap every little movement of that new baby. Grandma wants to see everyone one of those too. When you want to show off the new puppy, you pull out the phone. And in a week, none of them have any real meaning and might even get “deleted” just to make…
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Categories: #Photography, History, reblog
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I’ve printed two albums with a few photos, but it’s a good idea to print more.
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I’m going to have to think about this, too. Among all the other stuff that need thinking about. My brain is on super overload.
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Yes, it’s too many things that needs to be done or should have been done. Time-wise and financially it’s not possible to do it all.
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I was talking about this with my son – he is learning computer systems at college. He was saying that the changes in systems will be gradual and most new systems will have a backwards programme to access older photos. Or some of them will be in the Cloud. Hopefully the photo files won’t be changing – then we are in big trouble.
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Two things:
1) In my family, who would care enough about my pictures to take care of them? The answer is no one. My son and granddaughter are not interested and Garry is older than me, so he’s not going to be in preservationist mode.
2) So. Even if the technology changes are gradual, who is going to get it done? Not me, I’ll be gone. Not Garry, not his wheelhouse. Not my son or granddaughter, they don’t care. When I’m gone, it’s ALL gone.
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Isn’t it ironic? The most photographed generation will have little to show for it.
Leslie
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I hope younger people figure something out. A bit late for my generation. In a few years, we’ll be lucky if we remember what a picture IS.
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They may only have memory sticks or DVD’s with out the apparatus to read them.
Leslie
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I’ve thought about that recently, too. I still have boxes of photos from when the kids were small and only film cameras were available. Today’s photos are all digital. Probably I should print them out, but most likely I won’t. There’s time and expense involved in printing them, and then there’s the issue of where to store them. When my mother died, she had a huge canvas bag of photos going back to her own childhood. We each took a few photos as memories, but I have no idea where that big is now, or if it even exists any more. Maybe certain photos are meant to be enjoyed for only a short time – the really great photos have a way of surviving whether they’re in print form or digital.
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There are crates of photos at Garry’s parents house and they are just there. Like you, each son took a few, but the rest? Probably landfill.
Ditto when my parents were gone. I don’t know who has the pictures. Maybe someone. Maybe they were just trashed.
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it isnt only this generation, although they out-quantity us older dudes by a huge factor, simply because we were limited by film, money, and cameras. it cost MONEY to process photos, it cost money to buy film.
It’s the ease, the freeness of the process now. Once you own the disc, and the computer, and the software, all the rest is easy. bad shot? take ten more just to be on the safe side. We learned to bracket our shots, to save the last two or three spaces ‘just in case” the elephant came back…
But when I see the instagram shots, and the facebook horrors, and the rest, I realize that these wont disappear unless computers do. Take a photo of yourself half naked and pouty (and maybe lose 30 lbs before the next one, please) and post it in FB and it’s there forEVER. whatever goes on the net eventually ends up in Images, along with all the other similar images. Take it out of FB and it’s gone from there. But not from everywhere. Lol, I keep thinking that one day some of these images are going to surface in the oddest places. None of them good.
On the other side, I think kids don’t realize or comprehend the ephemeral-ness of computers. They have grown up with a mouse in one hand and a phone camera in the other, and really don’t get any other kind of existence. If, tomorrow, the entire structure came undone, the cry of anguish would topple buildings.
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I stopped printing pictures because there are expensive and I have no more room. For anything. We never look at our albums anymore. Oh, once in a blue moon we take them out and ooh and aah, but rarely.
Nor am I convinced digital data is so ephemeral. Does that also mean that all the ebooks and other documents published online will disappear along with the photographs? I tend to think not. There will be a persistence of data and information, just in new formats.
As for my own personal pictures, that’s a different story. If the kids are uninterested, my stuff will pretty much vanish. As have most pictures over the past 150 years of photography. I’m not sure there’s a solution for this problem. We die and our records die with us.
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I hadn’t thought of that- truthfully there is no one who would really care about my photos I think.
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We aren’t famous so nobody is going to care for our personal records. I’m not sure this is different than it ever was. Who saved the stuff of previous generations? No one, mostly.
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I was the “family collector” all the old family photos, made website with all the old scanned in photos for the family to look at, saved old documents. After me it will all be trash- the next generation holds no interest, so I will most likely get rid of it all myself. In the end, it doesn’t really matter I guess. I’m estranged from my 2 sisters and my brother is dead. And so it goes.
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Gosh, you have made me think. In the past I have printed out a selection of digital photos, say of a trip we’ve made and put them in an album, but then I stopped. Not sure why, especially when some foul up with Kodak gallery a few years back meant I lost most of the photos I took in Ontario. But then what with all the photos we take, it would mean very some time-consuming selection process to choose just a few to print. And then there’s the cost. And you have to dust the photo albums…what a dilemma.
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I have three external drives full of pictures, but I doubt anyone will care much about them except me. But who save my grandmother’s stuff? No one. That’s the way is goes. Unless you’re famous and someone is busy preserving “your legacy,” no one is going to save your stuff. On paper or on digital data. I’m sure most important data — books and records et all — will be on data bases somewhere. But not our stuff. Because … well … we aren’t that important to the universe. It’s humbling, isn’t it.
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Great post..
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The author makes some good points.
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