If you are actually bothering to read this then the chances are that it’ll be online. Few if any will print off and save preferring instead to return if desired to the blog and just scroll down. That’s fine, in fact in terms of conservation that is probably the most environmentally friendly way to do things. One of the ironies is that I’m actually handwriting the first draft of this, though mainly because I’m on holiday without my computer. When as a family we go on holiday we try to eschew all forms of electronic media; it makes us feel virtuous, though why I don’t know. Anyway the theme of this short rant is not the overuse of technology; I’m not some quaint Luddite who thinks the move away from goose quills was a step towards eternal damnation, but I am concerned for what the move towards more and more electronic reliance means.
Recently I came across some old photos, they were a mixture of informal and formal groupings of relatives, some of whom I instantly recognised others who, but for the notes on the back of the pictures would have remained anonymous. I studied them carefully, many of the subjects I had never met and since they were now dead apart from in an afterlife, in which I don’t believe, never will. Others had died more recently but were remembered in family stories that have become the staples of our history. The great thing is that seeing those people brought the stories back to life.
I have always been a keen photographer and yes my first camera was a box Brownie, given to me when I was on holiday with my aunt in Norway. Somewhere my first tentative steps towards recording images are tucked away in some cupboard, though where I have no idea. I gradually improved the standard of my equipment and in the early eighties moved into developing and printing my own pictures. This gave me the type of creative freedom that until then I had only dreamed of and some of the collages I produced still remain amongst my favourite images. The in time for a trip to New Zealand I bought my current digital camera, a Cannon. I love it. I can take loads of photographs and they’re all there. I download them, stick them on CD or flash drive and look at them whenever I choose. And that is where the problem lies. I can enjoy them but what about in 50 years time? Will people come across flash drives and CDs and instantly be able to play them? I doubt it.
Only a few years ago three and half inch floppy disquettes were what we saved our information to; there aren’t that many computers produced, if any, that read these as standard. And I’m only talking about 10 years ago, what about 50, from where most of the photos I was looking at came from. Personal computers were a dream of the future. The other thing is that each ten years more development and innovation takes place than in the previous ten.
So what is the point of this piece of writing? Easy – print off your photos! Write the names of who is on them on the back. Keep the visual records of lives going, not just electronically but in a ‘hard’ format. That way 100 or 200 years from now someone might pick up a photograph and connect to her or his past.
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