Visual History: Are Digital Images Secure?
Feb. 8, 2004 — -- One by one, they have created our collective memory of history — famous photos of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln, the Hindenburg disaster, and the mother and her child that captured the despair of the Great Depression.
"These are all iconic images that are frozen in our memory and cannot be erased, even if we wanted to," says Els Rijper, curator of the Betteman photo archive.
But archivists have yet to find a way to save today's digital images for history, a way that will transcend the changes in technology and preserve the visual legacy of the 21st century for generations to come.
After all, conventional photography is now a thing of the past. Last year, more digital cameras were sold than conventional cameras. Last month, Kodak even announced it would stop making reloadable 35mm cameras in the United States and Europe.
Until a decade ago, pictures came from negatives and transparencies, something you could hold and file away.
Photos recorded the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, with JFK Jr. saluting his father's casket; of Martin Luther King Jr., with a famous image of aides pointing toward the assassin; and of Robert F. Kennedy, his face struck by harsh light as he lay on the floor of the Ambasador Hotel kitchen in Los Angeles.
Famous images from Vietnam depict a disillusioned soldier, the summary execution of a Viet Cong suspect, a young girl running in terror from a napalm attack.
"Everyone remembers every single major historical event by a still image," says Mary Ann Golon, a picture editor who chooses the images for each week's Time magazine. "Still images last in a way that moving images don't."
Archives like Betteman, photo agencies like Corbis and Getty, and publications like Time all have worked painstakingly to preserve those frozen moments of the past.
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