The future of our past

Archived from groups: rec.photo.digital (More info?)

Curt Bousquet wrote:
> "Alan Meyer" <ameyer2@yahoo.com> wrote let it be known in
> news:1109436192.652984.225840@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com:
>
>> So save your digital photos and records! Scan and digitize
>> the old family photos and diaries in your possession!
>>
>> There is a decent chance they'll be preserved.
>
> The pessimist in me says yes, they can and probably will be
> preserved.
>
> But then the question becomes... who will ever look at them?
> If every photo and every snapshot from every human being is
> preserved forever, the volume of the information becomes its
> own barrier to being accessed. What human, besides an
> occasional historian, is going to devote the lifetime it could
> require to view even 1% of the archived information?
>

This will play right into that, I bet:

I'm the guy who looks at everyone's photos. Not Sunsets, unless they
have a people story implicit. My continuing passion is to make some kind
of connection with the subjects of those old snapshots. I have seen and
bought some wonderful old photos from eBay seller "Gargantua". A
favorite is of a birthday party: 6- 8- 9- 10-year-olds, it looks like,
early fifties era, I'd guess. The guest of honor is flanked by smug miss
prissy and his put-upon younger sister who is bored and resentful; there
is the one with pretty but sad expression, the little devil having fun
in his own terms, the decorous miniature adult whose mind has wandered;
others, each a proto- or stereo-type. Every one of them could have grown
up into your neighbor or your wife or the judge who fined you for a
moving violation. Civilized (!) humanity compressed and depicted in a
monochrome crispness unimaginable today.

> How many photos of random people (even if they are distant
> relatives of yours) being foolish at a family picnic 100 years
> ago can the world endure?
>

Well, I took several minutes of joy away from my first viewing of that
photo and have just accumulated another five's worth. Marvelous for the
soul. What do you suppose would have happened to that photo if someone
hadn't saved it, dumped it in a box at a yard sale, let it go with
another hundred family photos? Oblivion, for sure. Lucky for me, it
didn't happen that way. Here I am en-joy-ing it, and sharing something
of it with you. I can't withhold it. Look here (89K; 1280x7??):
http://www.fototime.com/1032B985B366E25/orig.jpg

> Even 'good' photos would become overwhelming. After 10,000
> 'perfect' Grand Canyon sunset photographs, what do you do with
> the other 1,000,000 that will surely eventually accumulate?
>
> Yeah, if I was living in that future I might look up my great-
> great-grandpa's photos once or twice when boredom set in, but
> I would feel no more connected to him that I would to a random
> stranger from the same era.
>
> While it would be wonderful for my ego to imagine my 'work'
> surviving forever, for the most part a photo that is never
> looked at might as well not exist.
>

Just because it's of no value to someone's adult daughter is no reason
ot suppose it is of no value to anyone, even without ID or known living
relatives.

I have recently come across a photo album with pictures of my Dad from
as long ago as 1929. When I was small we used to go through it and I got
the story and personalities of each person and situation depicted.
This is the car he and his friend used when they worked their way to
Yellowstone Park, thinning sugar beets, the year after he graduated from
High School.
http://www.fototime.com/60D6286C34314FF/orig.jpg Lucky to know this, as
I didn't take notes, and don't remember much of the material. Too bad.

It was with that in mind that I began my "Personal Web Page". Five years
later I'm about five percent done. I keep getting sidetracked, but once
in a while I remember to add a photo or a story, and it will all be
preserved on CD or DVD or some server somewhere, against disastrous lack
of foresight. It may not be my daughter who goes through it, nor my
granddaughter. Maybe just some doofus who buys an orphaned CD or DVD off
eBay, but some joy is available.

On the subject of "five percent done", a few months back I bought a five
pound box of old photos, 2500 or so. I've looked at about ten percent of
them, and already seen some wondrous worlds, and thought some wonderful
stories. A couple of them are marvelously sharp and detailed, and empty
of meaning beyond that. A few are replete with human values and
experience, and nourish my sense of commonality with the world's folks.
Nothing to approach the birthday party yet. We'll see.

So, yes: a 100-year-old family picnic photo may not be of much use, if
what it depicts is the fact of a family picnic; if it manages to peek
into the lives of the picnickers ... aaahh, joy. Just as in every other
aspect of photography, what you can take from it is dependent not only
on what someone puts into it, but what you are _willing_ to accept from
it.

The serious problem is with time, certainly. Not the time between image
capture and viewings one through _n_, but the time left to spend
looking. It gets shorter and shorter, faster and faster.

> Damn... I shouldn't respond to posts when I'm tired and
> depressed.


Now who's depressed?


--
Frank ess

Forecasting is difficult. Particularly about the Future.
—Deepak Gupta

Archived from groups: rec.photo.digital (More info?)

I hadn't looked at this thread in a while and am just now
reviewing it, picking up Curt, Frank, and Paul's comments.

I read Curt's comments and thought, "He's right. There's too
much dross out there already. How can yet another photo of a
scene that's been photographed to death be of any possible value
to anyone? How can another photograph of another set of
unknown, long dead strangers amidst a pile of hundreds of
millions of unknown long dead strangers be of any possible value
to anyone?" It got me rather depressed. How can my photos or
diaries that I've spent years creating possibly be of any value
to anyone but me, or be of any value after my death?

Then I read Frank's wonderful posting and it gave me new hope.
I read Paul's and saw that Frank isn't alone in looking back
at old images.

I too have had similar experiences. I look at Mathew Brady's
photos of the the 1850's and 60's and find myself peering at the
people in the photos - not just famous people like Abraham
Lincoln, but ordinary people too - and wondering about them,
trying to peer into their eyes and souls.

Maybe there is a point to preserving our images and our stories.
Maybe one person will look at what we've done for ten minutes,
once every 50 years.

That's worth something isn't it? If you make a photograph or
write a message and, 50 years from now, someone ponders it for
10 minutes, then during that 10 minutes you have once again
connected with another person, haven't you? It really is
some kind of a human connection I think.

Alan

Archived from groups: rec.photo.digital (More info?)

Volker Hetzer wrote:
> Alan Meyer wrote:
> > Maybe there is a point to preserving our images and our stories.
> > Maybe one person will look at what we've done for ten minutes,
> > once every 50 years.
> >
> > That's worth something isn't it? If you make a photograph or
> > write a message and, 50 years from now, someone ponders it for
> > 10 minutes, then during that 10 minutes you have once again
> > connected with another person, haven't you? It really is
> > some kind of a human connection I think.
>
> There are estimates that about 10^11 people have inhabited
> earth so far. How many people have you pondered about for
> 10 minutes?
>
> Making pictures won't make you memorable. Killing lots of
> people does.

Ah yes, we might call that the Ivan the Terrible theory
of memorability.

But I don't need to connect to all 10^11 people, or need
all of them to connect to me. One at a time, from time to
time, is all I need. And it still seems pretty meaningful
to me.

Alan

Archived from groups: rec.photo.digital (More info?)

Hi - I'm not one to post often. But this very subject is something I've
been pondering a lot lately for some reason. I've always loved documenting
family events and people, places and situations and digital seemed to be a
dream come true. Growing up I remember looking through the old family
photos, seeing how people and places changed over the years. The volume of
photographs and video that I'm accumulating on a yearly basis exceeds the
total "family archive" as it existed prior to 1982 which is when I took up
photography in earnest and when I began taking video. I wonder who is going
to care about this mountain of material - I'm not famous, probably never
will be and even if I was it'd be overkill.

But I figure I can either be pessimistic and go on a drinking binge or I can
continue to enjoy photography, and the times I manage something exceptional
I can enlarge it, frame it, slap up on the wall and admire it, make an
occasional slide show that we can enjoy now and in a few years. I'm sure
some of it will survive to my grandchildren's adulthood (hopefully the best
of it) and beyond, somehow. After all, I have numerous family papers and
photographs that are over a hundred years old that somehow found their way
into my hands - I did't go looking for them, initially anyway. If
technology "progresses" to the point that todays media or file formats are
absolutely useless, then maybe someone will have a boxful of prints to enjoy
like I did.

Thanks for letting me vent.

Tom

Archived from groups: rec.photo.digital (More info?)

In article <YKoXd.8442$c72.7030@bignews3.bellsouth.net>,
bob <not@not.not> wrote:
>Volker Hetzer wrote:
>
>> Making pictures won't make you memorable. Killing lots of
>> people does.
>>
>
>
>I'd say Leonardo da Vinci is at least as memorable as.... Gosh, I'm
>trying to remember the name of someone from the 1500s who killed lots of
>people, but I'm stumpped.

To take an obvious example, how about Queen Mary I of England, AKA "Bloody
Mary". Reigned from 1553-1558 and liked burning people.

Archived from groups: rec.photo.digital (More info?)

On Wed, 09 Mar 2005 14:53:55 -0500, bob <not@not.not> wrote:

>Chris Brown wrote:
>> In article <YKoXd.8442$c72.7030@bignews3.bellsouth.net>,
>> bob <not@not.not> wrote:
>>
>>>Volker Hetzer wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Making pictures won't make you memorable. Killing lots of
>>>>people does.
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>I'd say Leonardo da Vinci is at least as memorable as.... Gosh, I'm
>>>trying to remember the name of someone from the 1500s who killed lots of
>>>people, but I'm stumpped.
>>
>>
>> To take an obvious example, how about Queen Mary I of England, AKA "Bloody
>> Mary". Reigned from 1553-1558 and liked burning people.
>
>
>Good choice. In a world-wide poll, who would more people know more
>about? I'd bet on Leonardo. In casual conversation (maybe at a bar) I've
>heard people discuss artists more often than killers.
>
>Bob

Maybe a bar without ferns is in order. :-)
I don't frequent bars much (I don't drink booze), but I do go with
some friends once in a while (and order Diet Coke :-) ). I don't hear
the patrons discussing artists at all. And I *DO* hear them discussing
killers, especially if one's been in the news recently.

--
Bill Funk
Change "g" to "a"