Most images these days are not real. They are virtual. You rarely hold photographs in your hands any more. I’d wager that most of the photographs you see are virtual. The back of a cellphone, a computer, or pixels projected on a screen or some other computer generated image. They are not artifacts, they are virtual images. It’s getting to the point where you almost have to go to a museum to see a real photograph because the photograph as artifact is becoming increasingly rare. I exaggerate, but not by much I think. There will be a time when the only place you can see a photograph will be a museum.
With this replacement of the physical with the virtual I think something odd will happen. Instead of becoming more valuable with age and scarcity, photographs will have less value because current and future generations do not appreciate the physical artifact because they have been raised in a virtual world. It would be similar to wax cylinder music recordings; or for that matter a 78 rpm record. Maybe some collectors will have them, but for the most part, actual photographs will be a thing of the past because future generations are being raised with photographs as virtual images.
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