Digital BW, The Print

> Not sure I understand why it would be so important for any image to last
> 100 years or more. Most color images sure don't.

Unless they are 500 year rated carbon pigment prints!

>(Unless you're on of
> the top few dozen photographers in the world, then it may be of more
> concern).
>

Actually, it's not the artistic value that might be of concern, but rather
their historical value as an archive. As a day to day record of our world
today. Working in a photographic archive of 250,000 images, we have some
going back to the 1890's. Many of them are seemingly mundane. A good few are
very good photographs. A lot are interesting or intriguing. But, we still
get hundreds of reference request for images from this collection. From
researchers, writers, magazine, people hunting down family or tribal
history, school kids doing projects - the whole gamut.

The images come from every source you can imagine - families,
anthropologists, archaeologists, bush pilots, exploration geologists,
missionaries, civil servants, miners, photographers, wives of Mounties (some
of our best images - Geraldine Moodie's portraits from across the Arctic as
she accompanied her RCMP Inspector husband in 1906-08) and many more..

If many of these images were inkjet prints, they would be around, even with
80 years of life. So yes, it is important (unless, o course you can give us
the digital file! But bear in mind, many items in archives are not
negatives - those are long gone, but rather prints).

tim a


Wearing his hat as

Senior Digital Imaging Technician,
NWT Archives

(as opposed to editorial, Architectural, stock and several other kinds of
photographer :-)   )