OUR LOST VISUAL HISTORY

95% to 99% of human history is unrecorded and unknown.  Modern Homo Sapiens developed roughly 200,000 to 300,000 years ago, but the written word was only invented about 5,000 to 6,000 years ago.  This means only the last 1% to 5% of our existence is documented through written texts, which isn’t much.  The visual record of humanity is even more scarce.  Photography was invented in 1826 but not available to the consumer until 1888.  Thanks to the original Kodak camera we now have 138 years (about four and a half generations) of visual documentation of the average, normal human life, again not very much.  As a result of new technology, specifically the digitalization of photography begun in the 1990s, we very well may lose our photographic record of current daily life.  Even though we take more pictures than ever before --over a trillion photos globally, annually, fewer and fewer are likely to survive into the future.  How can this be?

The reason is the double-edged sword of ever-changing and ever-improving technology.  

Although I and others foresaw this early on, it really hit home for me personally about fifteen years ago.  I was in the attic of my parents’ home.  It was just after my father’s funeral, and my mom would be moving into a nursing home which would be partially funded by the sale of their house, after I got the place cleaned out.  I was going through decades of stuff when I found a large collection of photographs.  It was an historic sampling of every kind of 20^th century photographic media from color drugstore prints to Polaroids, slides –including  Anscochrome, Ektachrome and Kodachromes, old sepia-toned black and white prints and even tintypes from the 19^th century.  The storage conditions were aggressively less than ideal, and these pictures had been ‘cooking’ in the Texas heat and humidity for over forty years!  All the black and white photos I found were in relatively good condition as were the Kodachrome slides, which were as bright and colorful as the day they were picked up from the photo-lab.  But the 1960s-1970s era Anscochrome and Ektachrome slides along with all the color prints from the drugstores were faded to near nothingness because the dyes used at the time were unstable.  I could hold the Kodachrome slides up to the windowlight and see what the pictures were, and the black and white prints were all easily viewable. 

Those pictures still exist and are viewable because they are actual things.   They are artifacts, actual physical representations of the things photographed.  They are savable, collectible and possibly valuable.  I personally retrieved these photographs and have archived and preserved them in optimum conditions for the long-term in a cool, dark, low-humidity environment. 

The future will be different.  In the future, heirs and Estate salespeople won’t find many prints, slides or negatives.  They won’t find a thing, they will find data, data stored on a variety of what will then be ‘vintage’ media.  To view the data will require more time and effort than most will want to expend.  This is where the record of the times gets lost.

You can’t hold a digital file up to the window like a slide or negative to see what it is.  No, a digital-file image is going to require electricity, a computer with the proper software and whatever hardware necessary to view the images stored on whatever media format is found.  And who’s to say that in the future there will even be hardware and software available to read such things as: floppy disks, SyQuest Data Cartridges, Jazz disks, Zip disks, CDs, DVDs, CF cards, SD cards, or even thumb-drives.  I hope my USB hard drives will work in the future, but who knows? 

It’s the imagery encoded on digital media storage that we’re going to lose in the future.  Three main factors come into play which leads to the loss of this part of the consumer-photographic-historical-record.  First is data-corruption.  Magnetic and Optical storage is not indestructible, and data can be lost over time.  Secondly, it’s highly likely that the hardware/software to read these formats will no longer exist, making the imagery non-viewable.  Thirdly, the person going through the photographic archives must give a damn about the photography and have the time to view the pictures –and most won’t.  Many of those people will not have known the deceased and they’ll be pressed for time which means the photography will get tossed in the trash, unseen.  Nobody cares about your stupid pictures.  A legacy will be lost.  History will be undiscovered.

Occasionally iPhone Photographers ask me, “I’ve got four-hundred pictures on my phone, how do I archive them?”   They never like my two-word response: “Print them.”  No, they don’t want to print, heck, most ‘photographs’ today never get printed.  They’re disposable or one-time-viewing and exist only in the memory of some device.  These photos are never ‘made real’ and printed to become an artifact in our 3-D world, no, they only exist as unexpressed, unseen and ephemeral encoded ones and zeros.  Unless the photograph is printed, made viewable without a device, it’s not ‘real’ if it doesn’t exist as a physical thing.  Even copyright law states that an image must be “fixed in a tangible medium.”

If this first generation, the 1.0 era of digital photography, isn’t properly preserved then looking back at this time from a future perspective only an image-desert will be seen.  A CD or hard drive is not a picture.  Some fine art photography will be preserved because it will be printed, most commercial photography will also be preserved because it is perceived as having value, but the average person’s record of their life will be forever lost to time.  History will be full of visual holes and incomplete …and we just started documenting this stuff only a few generations ago.

It’s highly unlikely that the future will give us another cache of lost ‘Marilyn Monroe-type’ photos.  It’s doubtful that anything of historical significance will be found on some old Zip disk.  These things won’t exist, and if they do, they might not be found or viewed.  Would anyone find the old equipment necessary to view or copy the photos?  Would they care?  Again, it’s improbable. 

The only thing that can be done to prevent this data-history loss is to move the imagery from the virtual world into the real world by making prints.  Yeah, print the ‘good’ or ‘important’ pictures!  And good printing will be necessary, not some cheap print on copy paper from an office printer.  High quality, archival pigment or photographic prints will need to be made if they are going to last.  Prints should be stored archivally and not in a shoebox, but people today seldom consider the future, and most will not do this.  A large quantity of digital files quickly becomes overwhelming to print.  As professionals we ‘print as we go’ and archive them.  Nobody’s going to want to convert, organize and print hundreds of photos from their phone.  Our future, consumer-level, visual history will not be as rich as the 1890-1990 photographic era.  Chemical-analog photography started the archive; digital photography may well end it.

If it was important enough to point a camera at, it’s important enough to save.  Preserve the moment, print the picture.

 

Dale is author of Nobody Cares about your Stupid Pictures

Available from Amazon.com

A PREDICTION - APRIL 7, 2026

I'm writing this here because if I were to put it on any social media I'd likely be banned.

It is entirely possible that this could be my last entry, providing this even survives.  I watched only five minutes of the ‘news’ on TV this morning and I am horrified.  They said that trump (no capitol ‘T’ for the asshole) is threatening to “destroy the entire civilization of Iran tomorrow.”  This statement begs the question:

 Are we going to allow a senile old man to commit a genocide?

YES 

Nobody will stop him.  The yes-men, sycophantic ‘generals’ installed by the idiot, alcoholic, Secretary of ‘War’ will follow trumps orders without question.  But it won’t be by bombs dropped from million-dollar American planes.  It will be million-megaton nuclear bombs and millions will die.  There will be a swift retaliation from Iran’s major ally, Russia.  Russia will unleash their nuclear arsenal on America and global thermonuclear war will ensue.  Most of us will die.  The United States will be over, finished, a radioactive nuclear wasteland.  The entire planet will suffer if it survives at all.

Before we die let’s all congratulate the MAGA voters who not only ‘stuck it to the libs’ but everyone else on Earth as well.  Let’s also congratulate the republican congress for doing nothing to stop this.  Finally, major credit is due for America’s Greatest Coward, Merrick Garland, who had the power to stop trump, but willfully failed.

We suck.  We deserve this.  We allowed it to happen.  If there are historians in the future they will not pick and choose among those who are responsible.  No, they will blame all Americans for allowing this to happen.  They won’t write, ‘republicans’ or ‘MAGA,’ no, they’ll simply write, ‘The Americans.’  I’m so sorry, I didn’t want this and I didn’t vote for it (I’ve never voted for a republican) but myself and all decent Americans will be lumped together as one.

If trump does this, and he says he will, we're all finished.

END OF TRANSMISSION

 

THE RETROSPECTIVE THAT WASN’T

When my wife died in the summer of 2025 every aspect of my life changed.  It was a horrible time fraught with fear, anxiety, helplessness, grief, anger, and ultimately profound sorrow and loneliness.  We didn’t know it for almost a year, but she was doomed from the day she first got sick.  It took ten months for the idiot doctors at our terrible local hospitals to diagnose pancreatic cancer ---the worst of all cancers, the most painful, the least treatable with a 100 per cent fatality rate.  I watched her take her last breath.  I watched when they took her body away.  As I filled out forms and signed documents at the funeral parlor, I realized that there was another document I’d have to re-write now she was gone and that was my own Will.  I now had no one to leave anything to. 

I’d been thinking about my Will before she died.  After dealing with the deaths of my parents and being mostly written out of my parents’ will by my vindictive asshole father just before he took his life, I realized that as a life-long artist and not a ‘normal’ person I’d need a different sort of will.  While most people’s wills deal with money, bank accounts, property and what to leave the kids, mine would be different.  First, I don’t have children, so inheritance isn’t an issue.  (I’ll likely have little money for anyone to inherit when I die.)  But, for artists, we don’t really leave ‘inheritances,’ what artists leave behind after their mortal departures is an Artistic Legacy.  My biggest fear is after my death someone I don’t know, who doesn’t care, or is willing to spend much time, is going to come into my studio and toss my life’s work into a dumpster.  The original plan from all the previous Wills I’d written was to leave everything to my surviving wife.  Now, with her gone I needed someone sensitive and familiar with the life of an artist to preserve my legacy.  Luckily, I found that person in the form of a gallery curator, artist, writer and friend who is now written into the new will.  He will be the administrator of my artistic and literary legacy.  I’m comfortable with this person and I’m confident he’ll preserve my artistic legacy and hopefully make sure it is exhibited so others can see it.  I know he won’t throw away my work.

I think any artist who’s put in the time, produced the artwork and was serious about their craft deserves to have their work seen and recognized posthumously.  All serious artists deserve some kind of recognition in the form of a Retrospective Exhibition.  It’s literally the Last Chance to see their art, conveniently, all in one place.  A Retrospective shows the viewer who the artist was and their point of view.

Shortly after we moved to Prescott in the early 1990s, I began meeting and associating with local artists, musicians and most especially, other photographers.  One of those photo- graphers was Ross Hilmoe.  Ross it is agreed, was a character.  He was a small guy, with long, straight hair that, once he grew it out after his military obligation, seemingly never cut it or changed style.  A ‘forever hippie.’  Ross was a photographer but was especially renowned as a Master Black and White printer.  His subject-matter was The West and his print quality rivaled what one would expect from Ansel Adams, Brett Weston or George Tice.  In other words, good, classic American photography presented with the highest technical achievement that could come from a darkroom.  Back in the darkroom I was a pretty darned good black and white printer myself, so Ross and I had much in common and, although we ran in different circles, we were friends for thirty years.  During those thirty years, the digital revolution forever changed photography and what we did in the darkroom was supplanted by the desktop computer and, mainly, Adobe Photoshop.  Ross did not board the digital bus.  He continued to make prints for others until there was no one left with a negative.  As his darkroom time waned so did his physical ability to work as Parkinson’s Disease took its toll on his body.  A few months before what would have been his 80^th birthday, he passed away in his sleep in an assisted living facility.

A mutual friend, who would be the Executor of Ross’ estate, called me with the sad news of Ross’ death.  By the time Ross died I was already taking care of my wife who had gotten sick about four months before his passing, so I was already thinking along the lines of death, wills, legacy and artist retrospectives.  I immediately asked the Executor if he was in possession of Ross’ photographic prints.  He was.  Are they of exhibition quality?  Yes.  Were some of the prints framed, ready for presentation?  Yes.  “Well then, “I told the executor, “We need to mount a retrospective exhibition of his photography so the community where he lived can see his life’s work.”  The Executor was unsure, knowing that available and amenable exhibition spaces are hard to come by.  “I know a guy.”  I told him.  “Let me talk to him and see what we can put together.”  He gave me the go-ahead.

So, I had a conversation with my friend (who will be the administrator of my legacy when the time comes) who is currently the curator of the gallery at the local college, which also happens to be the most prestigious venue in town.  After some negotiations he agreed to the Ross Hilmoe Retrospective Exhibition, but it would be in a year in the future as the gallery books up about twelve months in advance.  The Executor wasn’t especially happy about the timing, but as a photographer himself, understood the logistics.  He wanted to disburse Ross’ works to friends and family but agreed he could facilitate them loaning the prints to the gallery for a retrospective in a year.

We, or at least I, was excited to mount a very cool Retrospective for our absent friend.  We began envisioning the prints on the wall.  Oh, and we’d put his 4x5 camera on a tripod over here, put his Hasselblad on a pedestal over there and we’d bring in one of his enlargers to display.  It would be a great remembrance of our friend and a glorious festival of handmade-analog black and white photography.

Then schoolhouse politics and other complications began to raise their ugly heads.

Early on came pushback from the Art Department Chairman (who is rather anti-photography, biased toward painting, printmaking and sculpture).  He didn’t want to do a solo show but instead make it a Black and White Photography exhibition Featuring Ross Hilmoe.  Already Ross’ prints were being disbursed and now the Executor wasn’t sure he’d be able to re-acquire them for a retrospective.  With the number of guaranteed available prints dwindling, we agreed, and Ross would still get a show.

Then more pushback.  Now all the Chairman would agree to would be, maybe, a wall for Ross during a group show and he would not be the featured artist.  We were led to believe we had a deal, but that deal was getting shittier as time passed.  And more and more of Ross’ prints were becoming unavailable.  Compromise was becoming impossible and no one seemed to care or put much energy into aside from me, and I couldn’t carry the ball alone.

It all came to an unceremonious end when the Chairman decided since 2026 was the 250^th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence that the gallery should devote itself to political art for the season ---along with the usual forgettable faculty and student shows.  And with that it ended.  Ross would not get a retrospective.  The community would have no opportunity to see a local deceased photographer’s legacy.  I was frustrated, disappointed and sad for Ross.  I feel he deserved more.  We can’t have one last exhibition for the dead guy? 

Now, during the time that would have been Ross’ exhibition there’s politically motivated drivel on the gallery walls and Ross’ photography has passed into obscurity.  There was a nice Memorial for Ross where some of his photographs were on display, but nothing like a solo, retrospective exhibition.  I was gifted an original, framed print by Ross which is now on permanent exhibition in my home (with a few other dead people’s artworks, hey at least I remember). 

For me it was a personal failure and disappointment.  I wanted to do something nice for a friend and was thwarted by short-sightedness and lack of interest.  I was hoping to start a trend; all halfway decent local artists should receive some kind of retrospective exhibition posthumously at a local venue.  Prescott is considered an ‘arts community’ after all. 

Unlike inheritance, an artist leaves a legacy.  I think this is important and meaningful.  Very few artists expect their works to be forever unseen ---yes, we create for ourselves but also for other like-minded people.  A good retrospective exhibition would show an artist’s progress and development from their early days to their end.  The creative process deserves to be displayed and celebrated.  The ‘Van Gogh’ effect is real.  Consider Vivian Maier.  No one in her lifetime saw her work and she didn’t even make prints.  Every bit of recognition she got came after her death, from a person who recognized the value of her vision.  Her work is brilliant and deserves to be seen, published and (even though not made by her hand) prints collected or become part of a museum’s archives. 

Perhaps I’m sentimental.  At minimum Ross’ prints should have been photographed for a retrospective book, but that didn’t happen because people were too busy, or the estate didn’t have enough cash, or mainly, nobody cared enough.  I cared.  I was the only person who suggested doing anything with Ross’ photography aside from putting a few pieces on easels at his memorial/celebration of life. 

Life goes on and the Universe doesn’t care if any one person is alive to experience it.  The art left behind by a deceased artist represents their footprints in life.  It says to an otherwise distracted population, look, this person was here and while they existed, they left a mark, they created something unique.  So, if there’s a footprint there, point it out, show it to us.

Most people don’t leave footprints.  They’re born, they exist, most of them board the work-eat-sleep-repeat train and never really consider seriously what they’re doing or what they’ll leave behind.  They don’t leave any footprints.  They make no lasting contribution.  It’s like they were never here.  Six weeks after their death, their pets don’t even remember them.

When I die, please exhibit my work.  Give me the exhibition I felt I deserved when I was alive but never got.