Few negative contexts
In an earlier time, the negative was everything. I don’t mean in a philosophical sense. No, this is the “real thing”; the photographic negative. For the common man, the print was the thing, but for the person behind the lens, the only part worth protecting was the negative, won through chemical combat. Fragile, almost opaque, tiny by comparison to the fruit sought after in printed form. We treated our negatives like the “apple of our eye”, barely daring to touch their surface. We dusted with fine hair brushes and compressed air, and storage was archival. If you damaged the negative, every print would bear a silent and lasting witness.
Now, in a digital world, we duplicate our files with ease. This past weekend my sister let me copy better than 5 GBytes of digital pictures; essentially her whole photographic output for a year or two. Such a thing was unheard of in the analog era; no copy was ever good enough. Now, I have the same SAME SAME photos.
I have access to the original quality. My “digital darkroom” allows improvements without damage to the original image. The only dust is that which I inject with a mouse. I can flip and reframe and change to grey-scale, and then save or not save. So many choices, so little time. I might even get busy taking a few pictures of my own; the price is right!
My archivist mentality is certain that the only remaining pictures from my lifetime will be those engraved in silver salts, but it is fun to play with the current harvest of digital photos.
