Blasts from the past

There is much debate around these days about the safest way to save your images, given the nature of the ever-changing digital storage methods. How many back-up devices should one use? Is the 'cloud' safe, secure and permanent? Will the various digital formats favoured by different camera manufacturers still be compatible with the software in years to come? etc. etc. Luckily, I don't lose sleep over this as 99.9% of the images I would wish to keep are in negative form and strictly under my control. 

Cardiff, 1972

How photographers who exist solely in the digital world sleep at night after trusting their archive to the 'cloud', I can't imagine. It would be like me trusting all my negatives to be kept by a third party I didn't know and having no idea if they might even be around in a few years time. Unthinkable. 

Luckily for me I was given good advice many, many years ago when I started photographing and thanks to that I have all my past work intact and well ordered. Long before I knew about 'archival' processing I was told to wash my films and prints for forty-five minutes in running water and to use a filing system and good quality negative storage bags.  Not exactly rocket science but as a consequence, every negative is still in good condition and filed in such a way as to be easily findable and accessible. The technology for printing them isn't going to change now of course so each one, of every format from half-frame to 10" x 8" can still be printed. 

Cardiff, 1975

I'm also a great believer in making contact prints of everything so they are always available to review and peruse when a quiet moment presents itself. Scrolling through files in 'Lightroom' or similar doesn't quite allow me to have the same connection with those images than looking at whole sheets spread out on the studio bench and remembering the sequence of events that particular day. 

Mill Lane, Cardiff, 1972

Recent weeks have found me doing just this, reviewing work from the past that, for one reason or another, was overlooked and never printed at the time. Rediscovering old work is a pleasure, enhanced by the knowledge that the negative is sound and available to print without the fear of a lost or damaged file. 

A number of photographers I have known in the past found negative filing and storage a chore and didn't bother. I knew one who stapled the contact sheet to the negative sleeves and threw them in a cardboard box under his darkroom sink. He kept them for a year in case they were needed then had a throw-out. While I realise that most will never be printed my recent 'discoveries' have reinforced the point that it's wise to keep everything safely as you never know what might surface in years to come. 

Cardiff, 1975

The recent images I have found or rediscovered are from a period when Cardiff was in transition. Old streets, shops, ways of shopping were run down and throwbacks to the nineteen forties and fifties. While nostalgic and familiar, this, older Cardiff would soon disappear to be replaced with a slick, new and up to date metropolitan centre. One of the wonderful qualities of photography is its ability, through sympathetic eyes, to capture those past times and re-present them to a new audience who never knew the old city. 

Of course, for this to happen, those images have to still be available to be printed and published in a variety of forms and contexts. Luckily for me I still have them safe so I can rediscover a part of my cherished past work and environment.