the archive

Dina Litovsky posted recently about photos she’d taken on assignment in Hawaii many years ago. She said her shooting was guided by her own narrative. She shot a bunch and turned her photos over to the editor. But now she’s looking back at her images, and re-editing.

It’s a great collection. See them here: https://substack.com/inbox/post/190503844

Over time, we get better at not only taking photos, but the entire process. But Dina had trouble when she went through her archive from that trip. She says that back in those days, she thought that intentionality meant fewer images, and she culled her archive. She kept only what she thought were the best shots. Now that’s she’s re-editing, she’s lamenting the loss of all those other shots.

I know that people cull their archives, but I don’t get it. I’m not that kind of person. I don’t ever get rid of anything. I mean, that’s a problem in my life, to some extent, but I don’t think it’s a problem to keep all your photos. The digital ones, anyway. I feel like I have a lot of photos, but they all fit on one hard drive.

I also have all my negatives and prints, but that’s only two small boxes. So I’m not going to pass judgement on those who cull their film archives, because I don’t know what that’s like. Also, I’m not going to pass judgement on those who cull their digital archives. Do what you feel works for you. But I will recommend you err on the side of keeping.

I’ve also heard of people who trashed everything because they were starting over. That’s unimaginable to me, but also a very different situation.

I’ve long recognized that I might want to go back through my shots and see if anything warrants a new look, but I don’t think this has ever happened. This is because anything that’s even halfway decent gets fixed up. I’m not a professional who’s carefully selecting the images that get published and trashing or ignoring the rest.

And I do go through my archives quite a bit, looking for images. This happens often enough that I’m not even sure an unloved image has come to be well-liked, since if it does, it occurs slowly, over time. I know I have images that I used to love, but have decided aren’t that great, but I’m sure that’s not uncommon for people, and for various reasons.

I should clarify that the word “archives” refers to two distinct things. One is every shot I’ve ever taken. The other is every shot I’ve fixed up and put where I can see it. The latter is over 5700 images. But I see them often enough that I don’t lose track. I know them and remember them, and seeing them helps me remember taking them.

Of course, mishaps happen. One year I lost some photos in a crash. Another time I shot a roll of film and didn’t get my negatives back. Tonight I was going through my oldest images because I thought that would be fitting for a post about archives, and after I decided on one, I couldn’t find the original. The one above, I know I took it with my Canon XTi in June of 2008, but I can’t find the original file. I could only find a version that was downsized for viewing on the internets in the aughts. I had just about given up looking, when I found a version that was resized but big. whew!

Isn’t it interesting how differently people treat their archives?