The age of digital photography and Uncle Tom

Firstly, let it be said that I’m all for digital photography – it enables the photographer, professional or amateur to take a hundred shots per minute and the delete / edit 99% of them. I take a LOT of photos and always have. In fact, one of the greatest pleasures and almost an extension of my annual holiday was the pleasure in collecting my developed photos from Boots – I miss that.

The inspiration for this particular blog was a telephone conversation with my mom last week after which I found myself wondering about the future impact of the digital photo age.

My mom, retiree and a very keen family historian, has recently located and contacted relatives who live in a small town on the eastern side of Vancouver Island, Canada. Her recently discovered second cousin and great niece (I think) have delighted in sharing stories, tales of family and old photographs of extended and past family; my mom is thoroughly enjoying it, as are they. Amazingly, they have discovered that some of the photo’s they both have are the same as each other’s and this, in my opinion, shows how important photographs are as a communicator and should continue to be to our future generations – I do believe that this is a form of communication and sense of belonging that will be lost if we continue to only store images digitally.

My mom and I had always been intrigued by tales of ‘adventurous’ Uncle Tom who had emigrated to Canada – a tale told to her by her father; my grandfather a rough and ready farmer and a fabulous and much-missed story-teller (if not slightly forgetful in his later years; this made his tales all the more entertaining) The absolute cherry on the top of the cake of many of his stories were the grainy black and white photographs that often accompanied them, and the way in which the story of the people wrapped around them, snippets of things that they did, ridiculous mishaps and memories of farm-life at the turn of the twentieth century. This was indeed the case when he talked about Uncle Tom. The few photographs that he had, showed the fruits Uncle Tom’s lumber yard strapped to the back of a wagon, a cabin somewhere in Canada with a hand –drawn arrow highlighting ‘Helen’s house’, the shop which was owned and run by Uncle Tom and his wife Mabel in later years and a colour picture with them standing in front of the snazzy car won at the state fair in Bowser, Vancouver Island.

Canada, to a wide-eyed 8 year old; an entirely alien land which needed to be explored via maps and atlases (maybe an early indicator that I’d be a geographer and a frequent visitor to North America) The maps and atlases were great but those old photographs really brought it to life – fancy that, relatives across the other side of the world! Will this be the same for future generations; will our grandchildren Isla and Leo enjoy this great privilege of a story told and enhanced by a single image?

Have look below at Uncle Tom and his early life in British Colombia; the quality is not great but then that’s half of the pleasure. Sadly I fear the stories of the past will not be the same without images

 

I have thousands upon thousands of digital photographs stored on discs and computers here and there, backed up (far too infrequently I might add) but not printed; I think I could probably guess many other people would also say the same. My intention is always to but somehow…

For me, looking at albums is always a treat; it isn’t ever a planned activity it just sort of happens and then whoosh an afternoon in wasted in the loveliest of ways. Old photographs falling out of the yellowed pages which lost their ‘stickiness’ many years ago and the laughter generally surrounding the clothing and hair fashions of the day. These fun times along with the ‘doesn’t he look like so and so in this pic’, ‘I’d forgotten about THAT dress!’ ‘I wonder what they’re doing now’ and in the case of my sister, ‘why did my mom cut my fringe like that?’ (She’ll not thank me for that, but better than showing the photo)

I fear in a generation or two these important visual memories will be lost or deleted and the delight of viewing a grainy (or not so grainy) photograph that depicts a family holiday, celebration or just even a family likeness will be no more.

Still, there’s always the good old selfie and you’ll be able to compare the filtered pout of today to whatever tomorrow brings…

Anyway, I’m off to back up and send some away to Snapfish – happy printing.

*I would also like to add, as a small ‘learn by mistakes’ type of addition – back up your photos even if you don’t print them off as I lost thousands due to a hard disk failure in May of last year! If only I’d printed them out…