What do we do when it’s all over? Giving up a sport is easy – I can sell or give away any remaining kit and just stop doing whatever it was. Photography leaves a residue of pictures though. Who will care? It’s not like I’m famous and they will be acquired by a gallery. There’s not even enough pictures of any one place to interest a local museum. So what do I do with it all?
A collection of prints is one thing. They survive a long time and they are easy to understand. Negatives rely on someone having the means to look at them, and without that means they are likely to be thrown away. Digital files may be easier to view but are also easier to lose or delete. You’ve also to hope that the medium is still readable. I inherited a box of video tapes from my dad but I’ve yet to try transferring them to digital. Somewhere in the box is the tape of the transfer we did many years ago to move all the 8mm film home movies onto the wonderful new medium of VHS.
It all sounds rather morbid, but it will happen. At some point I will stop taking pictures. What do I then do with the pictures I have accumulated? My kids probably won’t be interested – why would they? My pictures are mostly of things they have never seen and require skills they aren’t interested in. I know that I inherited a pile of old negatives and pictures from my parents and grandparents, but that’s different because I’m interested in pictures and memory. To anyone else it would be a chore. But I don’t want to just throw their stuff or my stuff away. It shouldn’t end with me, but I’m not sure where it can go next. (Brief interlude for a Roy Batty moment)
Perhaps I put the negs and files into a sealed and dry box, label it well and list it amongst my effects. I can add the external drive I back up all my scans and digitals onto as well, as the pictures have easily-read descriptions with them. If it survives, good. If it doesn’t, I won’t be here to care. It meant a lot to me as I created them, but there’s no reason why it would mean anything to anyone else. Thinking a bit further, I should include in the box the scanner frames, as these are the easiest way to hold a negative to see or scan what is on it. If anyone was interested in the contents of the box, having the frames would remove one hurdle.
If I did this, the box would actually be under the control of my wife or our kids, as the pictures contain a lot of our lives together. So yes, it would make sense to include the basic tools to be able to use the contents.
Putting my pictures into a box wouldn’t be a bad idea to start now. They would all be in one place rather than scattered, and would be better-protected than they are now. I know there is a counter-argument that putting everything in one place means that one accident can destroy it all, but film is a unique medium, so there is only one copy unless you scan it. If I put the backup drive in with the film then I still have the separate live working hard drive in a different place.
I feel the beginnings of a plan. And, getting morbid again, it would be a lot easier for me to arrange than someone else. So, a large plastic box with a watertight lid is now on the shopping list.
But what about my cameras? Who cares? The cameras are mass-produced machines. They don’t contain the pictures I took. The cameras have no value other than their ability to take pictures. If the cameras were all given to a charity shop or sent to landfill it wouldn’t remove one memory from my archive of pictures. Ideally I (or someone) would sell them, just like I would with old sports kit. That extracts from them the only value they could provide.
What a morbid subject! On the other hand, planning for the future removes some current anxiety. Knowing what to do with all this stuff makes me calmer, and it also means I’m not leaving a mess for others. Not that I intend this plan to be needed for many years yet, but you should always dig your well before you are thirsty.
Fup Duck Photography 