Lost Capa Negs Found - The Mexican Suitcase

sitemistic said:
We haven't the slightest control over whether film will exist in the future. That decision will take place in board rooms by people who have little interest in photography.
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I think we know and understand your opinion, my comment was a joke not an incitement
 
varjag said:
Frankly it is getting too philosophical. In essence though it seems yet another case of downplaying a problem that one can't (or unwilling) to fix.

I am happy that Capa negs were found and looking forward to seeing "new" images from the rolls. The finds like this are rare but they highlight the importance of archival qualities of a medium.
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Wasn't Nitrate negatives replaced with cellulose due to its instability? 😛

Honestly there is alot of doom and gloom in this thread

Who is to say that along the line a company will develop not only software that can read any format from the past, but perhaps even develop a storage medium for digital files that will prove to be 99% stable and accurate?

My parents have negatives that have lasted and some that are completely useless ... they have slides are as pristine as the day they were developed and ones that haven't quite made it

Seems like that tends to be the case with harddrives, CDs, DVDs, Tape Drives, Flash Media, glass plates, film stock, and every other recording media developed in the past century

So you need to have copies of the original, copies of that, and then it would help to have a print of that... just in case
 
Ahhh, everyone says hieroglyphics last well - but have you seen the wind erosion after only four millenia or so ? I think we need to come up with something better than stone as a base material. They do need a strong light source too, to keep the printing times down.
 
MikeL said:
If you are going to bring up scale RML, I'd say it is ignorant to assume circumstances are that different and old lessons can't be applied. Yes, maybe on a small scale you can no longer apply the specific lessons for a product or medium that no longer exists. But when you study history it is obvious what the suppression of learning and understanding, the ignorance of history and it's lessons, has had on human societies.
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Ignorant? Even with full blown educational systems we haven't taken to heart any lesson history might have taught us. Like I said, I never studied history, but if the history of the past 100 years is anything to go by we learned squat from it.

But what is so special about history and relics from the past? I hear a lot of how important history is but no-one is actually explaining the why. My statement that history is rather unimportant is as valid as the opposite statement, and thus the importance of this Capa trove is limited. Probably 99% of the world pop. doesn't even know Capa, let alone care enough about his photos to be mildly interested in these negs. Had we not found the Rosetta stone, we'd still be mostly ignorant about the Egyptians. Had we not found these negs, we'd still be mostly ignorant about Capa during the Spanish Civil War (which most people here, I included, are totally ignorant about anyway). History only serves (poorly) to make us feel good about how "well" we progressed, how civilised we have become, but we haven't learned anything from it. Rather, we've forgotten more than we care to admit. And we're non the worse for it.
 
sitemistic said:
Or just add them to the 5,000 a minute being posted to flickr and then destroy them. No one will pay any attention to them; but, you won't have all that clutter around the house, either 🙂
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Flickr is a good idea. I have over 10,000 photos posted there in about two years. It's not an unreasonable means of archival storage. Not foolproof, but nothing is.

/T
 
RML said:
My statement that history is rather unimportant is as valid as the opposite statement, and thus the importance of this Capa trove is limited.

History only serves (poorly) to make us feel good about how "well" we progressed, how civilised we have become, but we haven't learned anything from it. Rather, we've forgotten more than we care to admit. And we're non the worse for it.
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My point was that the scale, whether the experience of one person, or a whole society, has value to those who care to remember. Yeah, not everyone gives a hoot, and some repeat mistakes, but that does not mean the information is not useful to others.

As for the last part, we can sit here and make these kinds of statements since we have benefited from this learning and understanding of what happened in the past. Of course we've forgotten a lot, but how can you make statement like we're non the worse for it? To put too much weight in it or being dismissive seems just as wrong.
 
MikeL said:
Of course we've forgotten a lot, but how can you make statement like we're non the worse for it? To put too much weight in it or being dismissive seems just as wrong.
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The "days of yore" are the "bad old days", except when we remember it fondly and consider them the "good old days". This ambiguity alone is enough to realise that today isn't better or worse than yesterday; just different. None of us knows how the day before we were born actually was, so we can only assume we understand it from what we're told by parents and teachers. Yet we don't truly understand, as we don't know the whole picture and never will. We've never smelled the smells, heard the sounds, tasted the flavours, loved the loves, hated the hates of that day. All we do is assume we understand that day, and we assume we understand it better the more information we can lay hands on.

Still it's a futile exercise. The past is what it was, today is what it is, and tomorrow is what it will be. There's no going back to understand the full story. That's why, though I find the Capa negs really interesting (yes, I too want more information to make better sense of the past, or just to satisfy my curiosity), I believe that history has limited importance to our daily life, whether on a grand global scale or in the micro cosmos that is our private lives.

The few lessons that might be gleaned from history hardly apply to our lives today. Only in the broadest, vaguest terms, these lessons apply to today. We are formed by the day before we were born but we can never be part of that day. One may try. I rather stick to today and look at the future. It's brighter over there. I assume. 🙂
 
But it's not a futile enterprise. I believe we (humanity) have learned a great deal from history & will continue to do so in the future. If history tells us only 1 thing, it's that some days are actually worse than others, much worse in fact, & that they can be prevented. Have we totally solved every problem? Of course not, but I would modestly suggest that many things have gotten better. Much better.

Yes, we will continue to make mistakes, but @ least they should be new mistakes; indeed it seems it would be criminal to make the exact same ones. And the value of history is not simply in practical damage control or prevention, it's not medicine or spinach, after all. The fact that you find it "interesting" because of your curiosity is your clue: History helps us appreciate, if not wholly understand, who we are & where we came from. It reminds you that whatever life you're leading right now isn't just about you, it's also about those who came before you & their lives. So I would say that the past is as important, albeit just as unknowable, as the future, particularly a future that, to allude to sitemistic's post that started much of this discussion, will most likely forget about all of us individually. Sic transit gloria mundi.

RML said:
The "days of yore" are the "bad old days", except when we remember it fondly and consider them the "good old days". This ambiguity alone is enough to realise that today isn't better or worse than yesterday; just different. None of us knows how the day before we were born actually was, so we can only assume we understand it from what we're told by parents and teachers. Yet we don't truly understand, as we don't know the whole picture and never will. We've never smelled the smells, heard the sounds, tasted the flavours, loved the loves, hated the hates of that day. All we do is assume we understand that day, and we assume we understand it better the more information we can lay hands on.

Still it's a futile exercise. The past is what it was, today is what it is, and tomorrow is what it will be. There's no going back to understand the full story. That's why, though I find the Capa negs really interesting (yes, I too want more information to make better sense of the past, or just to satisfy my curiosity), I believe that history has limited importance to our daily life, whether on a grand global scale or in the micro cosmos that is our private lives.

The few lessons that might be gleaned from history hardly apply to our lives today. Only in the broadest, vaguest terms, these lessons apply to today. We are formed by the day before we were born but we can never be part of that day. One may try. I rather stick to today and look at the future. It's brighter over there. I assume. 🙂
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RML,

Reading a lot of Buddhist lit lately?

I applaud the thought of focusing on the current day, but you are a summation of your own personal history. From day 1 to now, your experiences and how you processed those experiences helped to form who you are, now. To separate yourself from your own past history is to not have gained (or rather retained) any knowledge at all.

The same logic scales up and applies to societal levels. no?
 
dannynono said:
RML,

Reading a lot of Buddhist lit lately?

I applaud the thought of focusing on the current day, but you are a summation of your own personal history. From day 1 to now, your experiences and how you processed those experiences helped to form who you are, now. To separate yourself from your own past history is to not have gained (or rather retained) any knowledge at all.
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No Buddhism in sight right now. I'm more inclined in the very basics of it: release from lust, to increase peace of mind and happiness.

The same logic scales up and applies to societal levels. no?
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I think that may be stretching things too much. Even individuals often don't learn from their own (gross) mistakes. And societies don't either. Prisons are full of repeat offenders. Spousal abuse is rampant in much of this world, and yet these women (it's mostly women who are the victims) in many cases keep coming back to their abusive husband, repeating to themselves "things will get better someday". War is waged over futilities and lies over and over again. And in the past 4000 years we've never taken the lessons from any major religion to heart, or else this world would be a much more peaceful place. History is what we left behind, discarded like an old rag. Do we need to keep coming back to the rag?
 
And all the knowledge of all the good and bad decisions you made over a lifetime will make no difference to the future.
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applying this thought to your photographic skills, you've not improved?

In a very literal sense of the above, you would display no cognitive development if you were unable to make better decisions based on your past experience. no?
 
sitemistic said:
My parents offered their life experience to me and I ignored them, learning not from their experience but from my mistakes. The lessons of the past are not useful to the future. We never seem to learn from them.
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Isn't this why they are not useful, people believe they are not, and therefore don't listen?
I think there is a range of people: Those that don't learn from their mistakes, those that do, and those that learn from the mistakes of others. It's not just one or the other, from an individual or societal standpoint (human or otherwise). I just don't buy that the lessons of the past are not useful to the future. In many fundamental ways, things have not changed much over the last thousands of years to make the lessons irrelevent. (The scale and type of lessons are maybe where folks differ here)

And sitemistic, don't you think that you may not have noticed the lessons from your parents that were helpful, that they learned and passed on, and you are just more aware of the mistakes where you ignored them?
 
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"History" includes more than just the events that took place at a given time. History encompasses how cultures came about and evolved and how we got to where we are. Pictures are pieces of the puzzle. We sent pictures into space to let potential other cultures have some visual knowledge of our own. It's good to see images...it helps to understand and appreciate.

Knowing stuff is better than not knowing.

I believe those who would deny the past has any influence on the present or that the present will not influence the future have failed to understand that we are all totally products of the past. The future will be whatever we make it.
 
I don't think it's off topic. Yet. The original post concerned Capa's negatives and the archiving of pictures. Archiving, or preservation, is done for historical purposes. So the conversation took a little tangent but it's still on topic.

The flames haven't even gotten warm yet either. Just a few minor disagreements.🙂
 
Dogman said:
"History" includes more than just the events that took place at a given time. History encompasses how cultures came about and evolved and how we got to where we are. Pictures are pieces of the puzzle. We sent pictures into space to let potential other cultures have some visual knowledge of our own. It's good to see images...it helps to understand and appreciate.

Knowing stuff is better than not knowing.

I believe those who would deny the past has any influence on the present or that the present will not influence the future have failed to understand that we are all totally products of the past. The future will be whatever we make it.
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You put it better than I could at the moment...🙂


- Barrett
 
Dogman said:
I don't think it's off topic. Yet. The original post concerned Capa's negatives and the archiving of pictures. Archiving, or preservation, is done for historical purposes. So the conversation took a little tangent but it's still on topic.

The flames haven't even gotten warm yet either. Just a few minor disagreements.🙂
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Dogman,
Speaking of minor, have you shot any sky photos of Ursa Minor lately?

/T
 
http://www.flickr.com/photos/21652620@N08/2222885991/

With the benign (somewhat benign) help of Tuulikki I managed to cut/paste this access! This is a series of wonderful shots from Italy 1945. Mostly done with an old Elmar 35/3.5 with a variety of films. Goes to prove one thing, all these newfangled lenses are fun to play with, but a 60+ year lens in the hand of someone who knows what he/she is doing is just as good!
 
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