Talking Pictures Quotes

“People don’t write on the backs of photos much anymore. That’s because we don’t write on anything as much as we used to—at least, not in a traditional, pen-to-paper sense. Nor do we even take photos—by which I mean real photos, printed on paper coated with photo emulsion. Cameras have proliferated as never before, but the images they produce are ephemeral strings of ones and zeroes, rarely printed, stored on chips and drives that are easily damaged or erased, susceptible to heat, magnets, wear, and obsolescence. A hard drive might last five years, a compact disc ten or fifteen. A well-printed snapshot will still be visible after a century—negatives even longer. We are no longer leaving behind a tangible, enduring photographic record of ourselves.”
― Ransom Riggs, Talking Pictures: Images and Messages Rescued from the Past