Opinion: Will there be a visual archive to tell the story of our time?

Thanks to devices such as smartphones and tablets, we take a mind boggling amount of photographs nowadays, up to a whopping 1.4 trillion globally per year, in fact. 

And yet, we look set to be the generation that leaves one of the poorest archives of the last few hundred years. 

“It didn’t happen if it’s not on social media” is one of the mantras of our time, certainly from a photographic and video-sharing point of view. 

But with technology moving so quickly and devices becoming lost, damaged or obsolete, what will future generations know of these times in which we live?

It’s an old adage that a picture can tell a thousand words. And looking back at old photos we see so much about how people lived, worked, socialised, dressed; even their body language told us so much.

Think of those photos we see taken by early travelling photographers of families outside old thatched cottages in rural Donegal in the late 1800s. There is a lowering and tilting of the head, a shyness, an inherent mistrust.

We see the layers of clothes to keep the cold out, children clutching their mother’s skirts, well-worn boots, farm and household implements depicting a simpler lifestyle, pristine whitewashed walls that conveyed a pride and dignity that was not always easy to maintain. 

And when we see photos of global events such as war zones, the first aeroplanes, the launch of the Titanic, we see so much more than a static moment captured in that single frame. What we are looking at is humanity in all its innovative greatness and in all its horror.   We see the doers, the makers, the dignitaries, the common people, and how they fit together in that time and place. 

At a more intimate level, we see faces in photographic portraits that were very precious in bygone years - school photos posted off to distant relatives, or family photographs that were treasured because of their rarity and expense. 

But with so many records and photos now in digital format, will future generations - those for whom our technology will be as ancient as the camera obscura or daguerreotype is to us - have any sense of our time?

In recent years, we have lived through unprecedented experiences. 

I remember taking a photo one day of Rossnowlagh beach, absolutely empty. What was remarkable about this photo was that it was taken on a scorching hot May bank holiday, when normally we would have been photographing a beach packed with cars and holiday makers. 

As Covid-19 images go, there are many that are much more stark and thought provoking than my empty beach. The hazmat suits, the body bags, the families speaking to loved ones through hospital windows, the protective screens in retail stores, the yellow signs, people standing several metres apart on the street to have a catch-up. 

Already, many of these images have been erased or abandoned on phones which have been replaced.

So too have countless family photos. Our babies who we just couldn’t get enough photos of are now young adults with few records of their younger years. 

I know a few people who diligently order a printed photo book every year to capture their family’s precious moments, from their celebrations to the impromptu moments of joy that tell us so much about their lives. 

But these people are in the minority. I wish I was one of them. I have tried from time to time, and even succeeded on one occasion. But it seems like such a chore. And it is so hard to select the photos to use amidst the thousands that make their way onto our devices in any given year. 

Surrounded by archived newspapers and photographs here in the Donegal Democrat office, I know the value of a good archive. But it only goes so far. Anyone looking for newspaper articles from the last ten or 15 years would struggle to find them. Many have already been lost in changes of technology, changes of ownership, glitches beyond our control.

The entire concept of a tangible visual archive is slipping away from us, and will be gone completely unless we make a conscious, collective effort to preserve those story-filled snapshots of our people, place and time.