"Nothing exists, and therefore can be understood, in isolation from its context, for it is context that gives meaning to what we think and do". Professor Paul Bate.
The story about your daughter asking her dad that question is funny.
And it makes me curious what it really means to archive, with or without context, in the current age. Most of us have ten million versions of ourselves on the Internet in some form, across different contexts, sometimes to the point of it all having no context anymore. We write and rewrite our bios, change our personal narratives by differently curating what we share. But most of that ends up belonging to someone else (Instagram or whoever owns the platform). So the need for that context is still there but in what form now and in the future?
A very interesting point about how we change our personal narratives. I think we need to decide what we want to be kept as our legacy - especially since we now all have so many digital documents and photos. When my husband died it was hard work going through all his digital files - and very tempting to just press delete.
I also worry about the digital dark hole. Instagram etc. are not saving our photos, they are displaying them for their business. While we benefit, they have no obligation to keep our photos, and I expect they won't keep them for many years.
I was so surprised to discover recently that a set of photos on someone else's Flickr from 15 years ago were still available online. I immediately downloaded a bunch of the ones I wanted (they were a photo shoot she did of me).
The word legacy has been coming up a lot lately in different contexts around me and it's something I want to think about more. My father passed about eight months ago and none of us have touched any of his digital files. It's all too much.
I had the same feeling about my late husband’s digital files. I think having everything digital is a huge problem that few people are aware of, let alone doing something about.
Great read, it really adds to the understanding of archive photos. Now I have some work to do! Thank you.
The story about your daughter asking her dad that question is funny.
And it makes me curious what it really means to archive, with or without context, in the current age. Most of us have ten million versions of ourselves on the Internet in some form, across different contexts, sometimes to the point of it all having no context anymore. We write and rewrite our bios, change our personal narratives by differently curating what we share. But most of that ends up belonging to someone else (Instagram or whoever owns the platform). So the need for that context is still there but in what form now and in the future?
A very interesting point about how we change our personal narratives. I think we need to decide what we want to be kept as our legacy - especially since we now all have so many digital documents and photos. When my husband died it was hard work going through all his digital files - and very tempting to just press delete.
I also worry about the digital dark hole. Instagram etc. are not saving our photos, they are displaying them for their business. While we benefit, they have no obligation to keep our photos, and I expect they won't keep them for many years.
I was so surprised to discover recently that a set of photos on someone else's Flickr from 15 years ago were still available online. I immediately downloaded a bunch of the ones I wanted (they were a photo shoot she did of me).
The word legacy has been coming up a lot lately in different contexts around me and it's something I want to think about more. My father passed about eight months ago and none of us have touched any of his digital files. It's all too much.
I had the same feeling about my late husband’s digital files. I think having everything digital is a huge problem that few people are aware of, let alone doing something about.
For me, context is what shape our existence, all the objects, all the structures and all the silence.
It is true - I never really thought about it until I wrote this article.
For instance, silence is what gives meaning to words. So silence is the context of words and vice versa