From: Dan Smith, Photographer (shooter@brigham.net)
Date: 04/09/00-12:51:54 PM Z
> Since the 60s there has been a rather large accumulation of color
Bob Schramm wrote:
> images which, as we all know, are not archival. I doubt if anyone
> is going to spend the money to copy this stuff so a lot of it will
> just fade away with time. Video tape is not any better and inkjet
> prints are worse. The best we have right not for color is
> Kodachrome (50-75 yrs), optical CD (50 yrs) and Ilfochrome (200 yrs)
> which is rather expensive. We archivists like thing to last for hundreds
of
> years so we like B & W silver-gelatine on fiber, toned
> (300-1000 yrs), platinotype on 100% rag, neutral paper (forever?)
> and gum with carbon as the pigment on good paper (also perhaps
> forever). Photogravure should also last quite a while depending on the
> ink and paper.
>
> My point is that sometimes the older technology is better after all.
>
> Perhaps the alternative process printers will be the people who
> save our images for posterity.
I don't see it so much as the life expectancy, though this is a major
problem with ALL digital media(with top scientists still saying the finest
digital is losing 'bits & bytes' within 5 years-AND "if it is important,
back it up in silver") is one that should have us concerned.
I see the greater problem coming up more and more as to just what images are
going to be saved out of all that are shot.
Newswork, a major source of our archives for the last Century and a half,
now go digital. Shoot 200 images for a story and 3 are used. ALL THE REST
ARE ERASED! No record other than what the paper printed. No contact sheets
for future editors to look over and use other images from. No record of what
really happened, just the 'grabber' shot taken at the time.
We are fast becoming a culture of the here and now and losing a sense of
history and digital is only hastening the process. It encourages throwing
away anything that doesn't have immediate use.
Our posterity will love digital convenience even as they lose a sense of
where they have come from.
dan smith
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