Technological development in photography and the changes it has brought are the subject of constant discussion. We talk about how easy it has become to take photographs, how little each exposure costs, and how camera resolution continues to increase.
Comparisons often show digital photography as superior to analogue photography: photographs cost practically nothing, especially when made with a phone we already own; image quality improves constantly; and taking photographs becomes easier and easier.
What receives far less attention is the other side of this technological revolution: the permanence of the photographs we produce. And in this respect, the impact of the digital revolution has been much less reassuring.
The Search for a Permanent Photograph
When the first photographic processes appeared, nobody really knew how long the resulting images would survive. There were no old photographs from which the effects of ageing could be judged.
Photography was also compared with painting — a medium capable of surviving for centuries.
For this reason, processes such as salted paper, albumen printing, Van Dyke brown and even cyanotype were once considered insufficiently permanent. Their expected longevity — already measured in many decades — still encouraged photographers and researchers to search for more durable processes.
One result of that search was carbon printing, a process capable of producing photographs of exceptional permanence.
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| Photograph by Małgorzata Bardoń Carbon print |
Why Permanence Mattered
Photography quickly became a hobby, but its role was much broader.
Photographs preserved important moments and important people. They recorded family members, rulers, places and events. They also became works of art.
Both artists and collectors naturally wanted those objects to survive beyond the lifetime of the person who made or purchased them.
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| “Sopot”, photograph by Radosław Brzozowski Salted paper print |
As photography became cheaper and easier, however, the longevity of photographs gradually became less important to many users.
Traditional silver photographs on fibre-based papers were capable of considerable longevity. We know this not only from manufacturers’ claims but from surviving original prints more than a century old.
The introduction of RC papers, and especially the spread of colour photography, changed the situation considerably. Many colour photographs have proved far less stable over time.
What Happened in the Digital Era?
With the arrival of digital photography, the situation changed again.
Film and black-and-white photographic prints — physical materials capable of surviving for long periods when properly processed and stored — largely disappeared from professional everyday use.
At the same time, much professional photography ceased to have any physical form at all.
Today, documentary photographs, reportage, family photographs and countless records of the world around us exist primarily as pixels stored on drives, memory cards, optical media or remote servers.
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| “Biebrza”, photograph by Radosław Brzozowski Toned cyanotype |
Digital storage media vary greatly in durability. There is also another problem: even when the data itself survives, we still need hardware and software capable of reading it.
How many people today still own a computer capable of reading a 3.5-inch floppy disk? And what about the older 5¼-inch format?
The same fate may eventually await storage technologies that seem completely ordinary today.
Can Digital Photographs Be Preserved?
Of course they can.
There are data-storage systems designed for long-term preservation. RAID arrays can reduce the risk of data loss, and some optical media are claimed to offer lifetimes exceeding one hundred years.
There are also printing technologies capable of producing photographs with substantial archival stability.
The problem is not that preservation is impossible.
The problem is that most photographs are not preserved in any systematic way at all.
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| “The Town of Gniew”, photograph by Radosław Brzozowski Oil print |
What Will Remain of Our Photographs?
Our grandparents and great-grandparents often left behind wedding photographs and childhood portraits that still survive in remarkably good condition.
Many photographs belonging to the generation of our parents have already faded or changed colour.
So what will our own photographs look like in ten or twenty years?
And how many of them will simply disappear because a drive failed, an account was lost, a file format became obsolete or nobody remembered where the files were stored?
Historical Processes and Photographic Permanence
We cannot preserve every photograph we make. Time and cost alone make that impossible.
But perhaps not every photograph needs to survive.
What we can do is make sure that at least the photographs that matter most are given a more durable form.
We can make archival-quality prints.
We can maintain several independent digital copies.
And we can also return to photographic processes that were developed specifically with permanence in mind — processes in which the photograph becomes a physical object again.
Perhaps the most important question is simply this: do we believe the photographs we make are worth preserving?
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| “Syria, Hama”, photograph by Radosław Brzozowski Gum bichromate print |
dr Radosław Brzozowski