It took a long time to create analog photographs. In order to assure our work was long-lived we developed our negatives and our prints to exacting archival standards. That most of these images should have been immediately forgotten was a point we never thought about. Archival, permanence and our legacy were important. We wanted our photographs to last forever.
Digital images for the web are created immediately and processed quickly, if not done immediately by your camera before you can upload the file to your social media account. We have achieved image immortality because the internet never forgets. You may go back and look at a blog post from 2010 and everything is (still) there.
Today’s photographs are created immediately and then immediately forgotten because the half life of an image on the internet is a day or two. The images might be forgettable to people, but remembered by the internet forever.
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