Digital photos disappearing

To fulfill one class requirement for my major, I took an AGCM photography class. This past semester, I’ve been taking a class that requires black and white film. Then we manually develop the film ourselves, and create photos with an enlarger. Wow! This takes hours to develop one high quality picture, something our generation is not used too.

I’ve definitely developed more of an appreciation for past photographers like Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange and Eugene Smith. Those photographers spent hours and hours to create the “perfect” picture.

In addition to learning how to take and print pictures the old fashioned way, we also discuss photography topics. Our family history may be disappearing from photos was one topic discussed. We discussed an article entitled “Film Photography Fades to Black” from the Wall Street Journal explaining why digital photography will not help preserve the memories in years to come.

First of all, many of us take the pictures and never actually print them. It takes a few minutes and dollars to run to Wal-Mart and actually print them. Many of us just save them on the computer and look at the photos when we want. But what about the future? Computers will crash, and the article argues that CD’s are unstable. Our next generation probably won’t even know what CD is anyway. Only hard copy pictures will travel from people to people well.

Another argument the article brought up was about the printing quality. For those pictures actually developed, which is a small percentage of the actual photos printed, the ink will not last. The article says the ink will only last a few decades before fading away.

What? Why do we take these photos then? I know that I’ve looked through pages of old photos to see what my great-great parents looked like when they were children. Our future generations of children may not have this because the ink faded. Pictures of the past or the ones I’m learning to print right now are created through chemicals that will last forever. The normal digital picture will not last forever.

I know that I was shocked when I found this out. Photographs are a huge part in history for the world. Hopefully, we’ll figure out a way to preserve our digital photographs soon or our digital pictures may slowly disappear.