Yeah, I watched part of Strange Brew the other night. Real subtle, eh. Strangely enough, this discussion can be steered a bit toward relevance to the list.
Archives are very important primary sources of historic images. Things deposited in archives are valued for hundreds of years. I retired last year after 20 years as photographer at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre, which is a major museum and archives in Canada's Northwest Territories. One very rewarding part of my work was helping to give people in small northern communities access to old photographs of their own communities and families. This was a much-valued services as in many cases few older images exist in those communities. I also had the priviledge of documenting some significant traditional activities of northern aboriginal people. I made a practice of documenting some aspects of Yellowknife, where I lived, and the various communities I visited. One thing of which I've become aware is the lack of visual documentation of the commonplace to be found in most archives. Try to find decent photos of small, local events or of people going about their daily lives. Good luck. In my experience photos of quite ordinary things can become very interesting and valuable to researchers and the general public only a generation or two after they are made. It is likely to become even more difficult to find that sort of thing as, given the ease with which digital files can disappear, the preservation of "ordinary" images is likely to become very shaky. (I went heavily digital in my technical work in the mid nineties and have dealt with image management on a fairly large scale.) So, here I am with a bunch of really nice old film gear, decent skills, and a bit of time. I've decided that one of the things I'll do when my Spotmatics need exercise is to shoot some views of local communities, little events, and people going about their daily business. Will just shoot the occasional part rolls and not go out of my way to do it. I'll process my own stuff or have develop-only processing, and scan and print my own contact sheets. Then I'll identify and date the stuff and file it. Someday it will end up in archives. The point of all this is that some of you folks on the list might think about documenting the ordinary and seeing that the images land in appropriate hands. It could be a very nice way of continuing to play with film. Cheers John Poirier William Robb wrote: > > John is a Canadian. Our humour is subtle. > > William Robb > > > > > > 2007/5/22, John Poirier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > >> I think it is shocking that government bums like the US > National Archives > >> should be practically giving away images, interfering with the sacred > >> right > >> of Getty Images to eke out a modest living. Clearly the > Archives must be > >> broken up and turned over to private sector people with a fundamental > >> understanding of, and true faith in, the bottom line. > > > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > [email protected] > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
