Library
picture from an original transparency, posed by a model (1990s)
A recent clear-out of
my office has revealed half-forgotten relics charting the history of technological change that has transformed photographic
publishing in the 20 years since I first set up my current workspace. Quite a few
have survived the early spring clean: the shelves stacked with boxes
of black and white contact sheets (necessary for locating valued old
negatives), 200 boxes of 10”x8” prints (unnecessary, but they took so much
time to make!), my one-time darkroom through a door at the far end
(in which an enlarger still has pride of place, but the blackout is
long gone), two or three film cameras I couldn't bring myself to part
with, and a large cardboard box containing thousands of slides
returned from a now defunct picture library.
But much has been
consigned to the recycling wheelie-bin, all redolent of a very
different era: price lists from courier companies and colour
processing labs, Kodak data sheets, a variety out-of-date printed
directories, records of
outgoing prints and original transparencies, and polite letters from picture researchers happy to pay NUJ recommended rates. A pile of CDs, used to
distribute library pictures to publishers in the early years of
digitisation, before photo library websites became commonplace, met a
more violent and less ecological end: I smashed them with a hammer
and sent them for land-fill. Regrettable but necessary.
It was the redundant
digital hardware that I found most alarming. The clear-out was
prompted by the arrival of faster and more capacious storage and a new computer requiring more desk space. Three new 4TB drives have
replaced a collection of 15 smaller ones - some as small as 80GB.
The redundant discs have now joined the enlarger in my redundant
darkroom.
Yet none of my IT
equipment has worn out - almost all of it looks as good as it did
when I first bought it. It's just become obsolete: too slow, too
small, or no longer upgradable to the latest OS. My eight-year-old
Mac Pro looks immaculate, but can't run the current version of
Lightroom or Final Cut Pro, and its stylish carcase under my desk
provokes some uneasy thoughts.
The care of film
negatives and transparencies was always an issue for analogue
photographers (the only sort there were until not very long ago).
Unlike digital images, they represent the only 'original' of each
picture, vulnerable to fire, flooding and various other potential
disasters. Digital files, on the other hand, can be copied ad
infinitum without losing quality. If you're into immortality, they
seem a much better bet. But what if they too become obsolete?
Negatives are very old technology, but they are still accessible.
They can even be seen with the naked eye. What if the software that
reads your digital files is no longer available? Or you can't afford
a new computer, or your annual subscription to Adobe's Creative Cloud? Or someone has
hacked their servers and disabled the activation on every copy
of Photoshop ever sold? Or a solar storm wipes every hard disc in
the known universe?
Now we are all vulnerable to an instant clear-out. And a wheelie-bin won't
be necessary.
