who wrote:This is a variable point - if one has hundreds of pics, then yes, but equally I have found showing maybe 80 pics max to family does go down quite well.......
My recollection is that even one small magazine was enough to induce glazed eyes.
with Jo and Jolene: will they move their images off their batphones and on to some other form of more permanent storage (as we would do) or will the image of them, drunk at last week's Christmas party eventually just be deleted to be replaced with the image of them, drunk, at the NYE inebriations along the harbour foreshores?
And do those pics have any real significance if they don't survive?
In many instances, I would contend that they do.
There have been recent exhibitions - serious museum and/or gallery exhibitions - of images made by immigrants to Oz, perhaps refugees, post-war, or perhaps refugees, pre-Thatcher. These images might depict the journey, or one's experiences on the journey, or they might depict contrasts and/or changes in lifestyles, such as from European village life through immigration hostels to local houses in suburban Oz, and so on.
From a photographic perspective - critique, artistic, compositional, etc - these images would mostly be regarded as snapshots, and that would be with good reason.
But over time these images have acquired a different value: they develop (pun intended) an historical and anthropological context within which they may now be viewed, and that gives them a very real significance well beyond anything that might have been considered at the time those images were originally made.
We have a window into the life and times of our forebears. We have a view of fashions and lifestyles of the day. We can see clothes, appliances, and cars of times long gone. And we get the opportunity to view, enjoy, and reminisce about cityscapes that have long since made way for what many regard as "progress". In that regard, I look at High St in Richmond in Melbourne, and how well that has been developed and maintained, and I look sadly at Sydney, and how we have not really made enough efforts here to preserve similar areas.
But I digress: My point is that we run the risk of losing much of this. It's all very well to preserve our images digitally, to copy them from media that will become obsolete to ongoing technology ... but it's also vitally important to print those images, to produce a hard copy, so that we can hand them around, share them with those about whom we care ...
And yes, stuff them in a bloody shoebox so that our grandchildren can pull them out, some day while playing in the attic, and so that they can ask us about who that funny looking fat guy with the bald head and beard is, and so that their grand children can, in turn, one day do the same.
This Xmas I intend to spend some downtime in moving some remaining legacy data to HDD.....
Ian,
Take a few moments to print some on the way through. I think you'll be very pleasantly surprised at the reaction you receive from not just others, but also by how you feel about them.
