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A moment of madness… thumb

A moment of madness…

What happens when you have 12 ring binders full of negatives and a hungry office shredder? Well possibly a moment of madness or quite an interesting cathartic exploration in letting go; that resulted in the examination of my practice as an image-maker and to question the perceived importance of the visual document.
Just over a year ago as I was indexing a roll of 120-colour film and its accompanying hand crafted contact sheet into my cherished archive, so I thought I would have a gander at some old contacts. Well to my surprise an image I held dearly in my mind did not exist; it was not lost, I found the image in question, yet it was not what I recalled. To me, my negatives had lied, giving me false information, which for some illogical reason I could not accept them as being correct.
Through my reasoning I had no need for these falsities. So I came up with a plan for their demise, this was no rushed affair, no whim of insanity or chaotic rage; this was a carefully calculated plan of attack. I started by examining each and every frame with meticulous detail on a light-box with a magnifying loupe. There were some that corresponded with my memories and others where there was no recollection at all, making me question if another person had taken them! I took note of how many frames there were, in which I split them up into their various formats and stock. As I was slowly building up to the execution I spoke to colleagues, friends and other photographers and they all pretty much said the same line:
‘You are mad and you will regret it…’
Well over a few nights I carried out my plan and shredded 10157 frames; so over ten thousand images of loved ones & lovers, commissions & snapshots and scenes of beauty & some of horror, all gone. With each format I bagged up the shredded pieces and weighed them; this was a further endeavour of cataloguing and recording. By handling the negatives as artefacts I was exploring a notion to see if there was any additional correlation between their weight and content. In the end the final manifestation and photographic record of my madness involved laying out the various shredded mounds onto a light-box and photographing them on a rostrum rig. Once completed the mounds of shredded memories were simply discarded. So please see below the evidence of my photographic history:

Frames: 1289 Weight: 791.5gms Russell Squires © 2013
Frames: 1289
Weight: 791.5gms
Russell Squires © 2013

Frames: 1038 Weight: 693.8gms Russell Squires © 2013
Frames: 1038
Weight: 693.8gms
Russell Squires © 2013

Frames: 760 Weight: 447.2gms Russell Squires © 2013
Frames: 760
Weight: 447.2gms
Russell Squires © 2013

Frames: 687 Weight: 163.4gms Russell Squires © 2013
Frames: 687
Weight: 163.4gms
Russell Squires © 2013

Frames: 1757 Weight: 412.1gms Russell Squires © 2013
Frames: 1757
Weight: 412.1gms
Russell Squires © 2013

Frames: 3982 Weight: 946.6gms Russell Squires © 2013
Frames: 3982
Weight: 946.6gms
Russell Squires © 2013

Frames: 184 Weight: 511.6gms Russell Squires © 2013
Frames: 184
Weight: 511.6gms
Russell Squires © 2013

Frames: 214 Weight: 789.9gms Russell Squires © 2013
Frames: 214
Weight: 789.9gms
Russell Squires © 2013

Frames: 223 Weight: 792.6gms Russell Squires © 2013
Frames: 223
Weight: 792.6gms
Russell Squires © 2013

Frames: 23 Weight: 13.3gms Russell Squires © 2013
Frames: 23
Weight: 13.3gms
Russell Squires © 2013

It is most likely that only about 5% of my frames ever got printed; so my photographic record that included my first roll of film is gone for good. Over a year on and I still do not regret my actions. I have though started a new archive, in which I’m a little more brutal in its formation, yet it is growing.
This leads me to discuss possible routes of digital archiving, which you might ask why did I not scan in every frame to store for posterity. Simple, part of my reasoning and investigation was to let go and not be concerned about what was. However I calculated that if I had scanned in all those frames at a high resolution, it would have resulted in a folder size of about 1390GB; which with today’s technology simply could have been stored on a portable HDD that would fit into a shirt pocket! So my entire photographic history could have been contained on a little black box…
Now it is this practice of storing not just our photographs, but also our entire digital multi media archives onto HDD’s, which we believe are in constant threat of becoming corrupt I find interesting. Part of this is the growing practice of employing a whole host of techniques to ensure that there are plenty of redundancies in place, just in case.
So what are our options for securing our digital archives? There are typically two principal avenues of backing up files, the first is on removal media such as portable HDD’s and the other is in the ‘Cloud’ – online storage, which basically is on someone else’s HDD’s, probably in a bunker in a dessert.
A great all round portable Hard Drive unit that can be safely stored away is made by Samsung, I have three of these and they are great.
Another option would be to use 3.5″ SATA HDD’s in some sort of enclosure. To greater improve the security you could get a dual ICY BOX, coupled with two 1TB HDD’s in which you could set up the file structure as a Mirrored Raid ‘RAID01’. Then once the Mirrored Raid is set, your computer would only recognise the pair as one unit. So every time you save a file it is mirrored to the other drive.
Now another consideration is the software to enable logical backups. If you are a Mac user then look no further than the preinstalled Time Machine software that coupled with the Samsung drive is great. For Windows users you could try Genie Timeline, again used with an external drive will be ideal.
Then we move onto Cloud storage; one of the main contenders is Dropbox, a system where you can access your files anywhere that has an Internet connection. There are quite a few services like this, some are free and others you pay a monthly fee. With the free ones the storage space will most likely will be small, so don’t clog them with large movie files; but for important documents they are ideal. If only I used something similar when I was writing my MA thesis a few years back, six thousand words vanished through a corrupt MBR on my old PC, ouch…
Anyway, madness or not; my negatives have gone, my memories remain unchallenged but my 50GB digital comic collection is safely backed up on two separate HDD’s, I must get my priorities in order!
 


Posted by author: Russell Squires

29 thoughts on “A moment of madness…

  • how can 10 images of shreds fill me with so much sadness? They seem somehow forlorn yet I admire your courage and tenacity

  • This reminds me of when the KLF burnt a million quid. I seem to remember at least some of them regretted it deeply. I like irrevocable things – they are moments of real life. Well done – very brave.

  • I have just done avery similar thing with a novel that wasn’t working. I collected everything up; every draft, footnote, character sketch and I dumped them into a folder on dropbox. I named the folder, ‘the weight around my neck’. So liberating. I should also mention a frightening experience. About a year ago, I had the laptop open in the middle of an assignment. I went downstairs for a cup of tea and heard a loud crash. The shelf above the desk had collapsed and a tin full of CD’s had landed on the laptop, just above the hard drive which was now ticking uneasily. The drive was beyond repair and I lost a lot of work. Thankfully Dropbox and the external hard drives had enough back up to get back to where I was but I sweated for a day or so. Back up and use longer screws would be my advice.

    • I suppose it is on the lines of the cliched frustrated painter that destroys their canvases… I do wonder sometimes if there were any images I will yearn for later down the road.
      Still your back-up system sounds great as things like this we can not predict, as I type this as I look nervously at a shelf full of books that is above my laptop…!!

  • Storing scanned negatives versus digital comics, I can’t help to read your “moment of madness” through this Alan Moore (mis)quote:
    “WE AREN’T CONTRACTUALLY TIED DOWN TO RATIONALITY!
    THERE IS NO SANITY CLAUSE! […] REMEMBER THERE’S ALWAYS MADNESS.”
    Thanks for sharing this work, really inspiring! Like Emma, I have a fondness for irrevocable things…

    • I also think about music in its MP3 state and wonder on similar lines… I have deleted scores of albums from iTunes that I just did not want anymore.
      I believe it is the madness that keeps me going why else endeavour down a creative/artistic route.

  • You had quite a few kilos of negatives in there!
    Well done. I have done similarly with my files from previous years where a lot got deleted for good. The task is to be repeated every January; I cannot stand gathering so many 01001 that will not have further use.

  • Only 50GB of digital comics?
    OK, I don’t read digital comics, but I still have a reasonable collection from my youth in my parent’s house, even a sealed Spider-Man No.1 or two – not the original original, but of a new series that started probably about 25 years ago or so. I’ve no idea why I still keep them – they’re not in any way important to me.
    Same goes with photographs. I have thousands upon thousands of digital images – family snaps, holidays, coursework, etc. many of which I should have deleted in camera, never mind when viewing them full size on the computer screen. Time constraints and apathy (mainly apathy) means they’re there on my computer, backed up with time machine onto one hard drive, and archived onto a further two once I take them out of Aperture. Buying more storage space seems cheaper than investing the hours and hours needed to sort the wheat from the chaff.
    Should I digitally shred them? After assessment of course…

  • I can’t think what would possess me to destroy my negatives, they provide the only sense of permanence in my archive. The digital archive has a sense of impending doom about it, changing spec’s, protocols and media. The print, and perhaps especially the digital print, can only laughingly be called archival which leaves the celluloid image as a bastion against the ephemeral nature of the digital world – well the glass plate as well I suppose. Looks like a lot of family and friends in that pile.

  • In a time when we try to cling on to and save whether as a negative, in a photo album or in ‘the cloud’ I think this is fantastic. Filter, crop, delete.

  • I LOVE THESE IMAGES! We throw away digital images everyday, who goes out and takes one shot these days when you can take 10 or 500? If it’s an unwanted shot throwing the piece of film away isn’t any worse than pressing delete, it’s not made of gold, and I think it could be called editing. I find it telling though that you couldn’t quite go all the way… you may not be able to print from the negatives again but in these digital images you still have the proof of your archive of negatives. An assertion perhaps that you had a photographic life and a certain skill set before the masses embraced photography through digital means?

  • Minimalism is becoming popular, perhaps you are joining in with that and freeing your mind up to new creativity by letting go of the old? I also try to have regular clean-ups, though it is a constant challenge…

  • I feel slightly dicomorted by this… but at the same time find the concept fantastic…has a very high Wow! factor for me but is it just tidying translated to art ?
    Or you could make a fortune; turn it into a book and sell it as Feng Shui for the creative mind!

  • I am still waiting for enough time to go through my archives with murder in my heart! In the meantime, the collection simply grows – exponentially I sometimes think. You are a brave man Russell!!

  • I recently inherited all my father’s black and white photos – and all the negatives. But they’re just heading straight for a skip. It’s a salutary thought – and I urge all of you not to leave this task and decision up to those who survive you!

  • It certainly takes courage to “simplify your life”, and it must have been a relief to unclutter your archives – in the course of which you have created some poignant images of a shredded past.

    • This simplification did/has not just stopped at my negatives. My lovely camera collection I treasured so much has been greatly reduced this last couple of years. Just looking at materialism a bit and asking myself “Do I need this or that…?”

  • I actually took a load of mine in archival window mounts to the recycling and the guy who scavenges for anything valuable wouldn’t let me throw them away. I ended up taking them back and putting them in the garden shed to moulder!

  • Another way of looking at it is that it only represent 81 seconds of your life in terms of a visual record – (assuming each shot was at /125th).
    And I spent much more then that reading your blog and looking at them
    phil

    • I would say a good guess at a timed representation of my photographic work, alas though I shot a lot of pinhole work during my BA, in which some of the exposures were on average 15 minutes long. One 5″x4″ shot I recall was a 45 minute exposure, which did take into account reciprocity shift.
      All good fun though.

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