#001 A Cautionary Tale
“Back it up” is a phrase whilst second nature to those folk having being born into the digital age is, or at least was for me something that I pretty much paid lip-service to.
“Yes of course it’s backed up” I would say to myself believing without doubt that I had in fact carried out the necessary function and executed it in a way which meant any untoward disaster befalling my digital photographic storage system could easily be rectified.
Aaah now I see you are way ahead of me already and quite correctly anticipate the focus of this my very first blog story in some way recounts the loss of a few digital files due to the “it” not indeed being backed up. For sake of clarity and understanding the ‘it’ I’m referring to is or at least was my entire digital photographic archive. Yes I managed with some hitherto unrealised expertise to delete, loose, disappear into the ether, twenty five years worth of digital photographs, lesson plans, letters in fact anything that can and was wonderfully stored on my gloriously brilliant iMac and associated hard drives.
Again I can hear you muttering, “okay Giles, but what about the second or indeed third backup to the backup”, for which I sadly and simply have no reasonable answer.
This is how it all happened, if indeed you are interested in the obviously stupid and criminally incompetent actions of your’s truly, Giles Penfound documentary photographer and magical vanisher of digital data?
The very irony is that at the time of unintended deletion I was intent on backing up all my old digital photographs and data prior to starting a new photographic venture. The how it was done or undone is still something I occasionally ponder with bemusement. Indeed I took the hard drives to Richard, one of my dearest friends who is far more adept at this sort of technical understanding and he was amazed to discover a complete void of any information on the said drives. If making data disappear completely and utterly from a computer were a career option then your’s truly would undoubtedly get the job, perhaps IT support to Mr Bond is on the cards?
Anyone who knows me would expect something of a mental and emotional tsunami to have been unleashed after me so brilliantly deleting what I estimate to be over half a million photographs, letters and general data stuff. In fact and with complete honesty my reaction was this…… “Bugger!”
With a pulse rate wonderfully low and relaxed I attempted to rectify my brilliant stupidity with the one cure-all for everything digital and computer based. I turned everything off and on again, indeed several times, over several days without the merest glimmer of anything reappearing from my former photographic archive, again “Bugger” definitely being the word of the moment.
It’s all gone, apart from a small selection of stories and individual photographs that exist in part in archives such as the Imperial War Museum, Getty Images etc etc, so not all is lost. Oh and one of the hard drives is now a installation art piece hanging on my studio wall.
It would be quite natural to assume that this is a story of woe and sadness, of loss and regret but I assure you it’s the complete opposite. Yes okay if you are working on anything digital then back up your work more than once and do what the experts suggest, but there is an alternative, a hero of the tale if you like.
This came or was already in existence for me in the shape and glorious presence of all my film negatives and transparencies, prints and books. The work that really meant so much to me was that made on film and it is safe and sound and free of any absent key stroke with which it could completely disappear. Since the great digital disappearance I have honestly shed not one tear for what has gone but definitely a few watery eyes have been the result of rediscovering and getting the know my analog film archive again.
Essentially I’ve started from scratch to connect with all my old photo stories, this time with a suitable and automatic backup in the form of physical negatives close at hand. It’s been a really positive experience due in part to recognising what’s important to me and what is not. The episode has also reminded me of and rekindled my great love of and for analog photography, for getting back to my spiritual photographic roots and reigniting the desire to build a proper darkroom and simply delight in my favourite form and expression of photography.
While this may indeed be a cautionary tale it is also one of discovery and a reminder to me of what is important and real. As truly brilliant and magical as digital photography is, this tale is a personal reminder that as far as I believe it’s only an illusion, a transient collection of digital one’s and zero’s held in our imagination and not made real unless printed. The greater magic and romance that exists for me is in the knowledge and certainly of a physical photographic process, one I can hold in my hands and feel, one that is in itself a physical part of the stories I make. The irony of what I say and where I say is not lost on me, while I may digitise my photographs in order to have this blog and website and indeed relish in the act, it is but a prelude, an invite to, a hint at the exquisite beauty of that which exists in the real world, in my studio.
Wishing you fair light and full frames
Giles