The archival crisis is a growing issue with digital media –– a medium often assumed to be safe from being permanently lost or destroyed –– being lost forever due to files being corrupted, hard drives failing, and formats and technology changing. 28-year-old Merritt Southwell knows this all too well, as she is currently procrastinating getting her rolls of 35 millimeter film developed.
“It’s so sad how things like film studio archives are being cleared out and we’re permanently losing work that people put their heart and souls into,” Merritt told reporters. “I can understand because I’ve been procrastinating getting my rolls of film developed and I’m afraid the film will spoil before I can see the 36 snapshots I took of that time I went to the county fair this summer.”
Merritt said she has at least three rolls of film that she still needs to send out to get developed, not to mention the roll that’s sitting unused in her Canon.
“I was really excited to take some fun pictures of my summer,” she told reporters. “But, as it turns out, I only really experienced a handful of photograph-worthy moments throughout the past three months. I took about seven photos on my Canon, and since then, it’s just been gathering dust on my shelf. It won’t be long before the roll spoils and I lose the only evidence I have of those seven good summer moments forever.”
Merritt explained that the archival crisis is a problem most people are unaware of until it impacts them directly.
“We were always taught that if something was put online, then it would be around forever, and it takes losing something to realize that that’s not true,” she said. “People need to understand that just because something is online, doesn’t mean it will be around forever, especially if we aren’t committed to preserving digital archives and ensuring that information isn’t lost simply because technology changed. We need to prioritize backing up our digital files and preserving our little sliver of human history.”
Merritt said her contribution to this “little sliver of human history” that she is looking to preserve is a handful of photos of her dog she took from artistic angles, several dozen photos of trees, and, of course, blurry black-and-white photos of fried Oreos from her time at the county fair.
As of press time, Merritt had finally sent out her rolls of film to be developed and had decided to just take pictures on her phone for the rest of the summer. However, she overestimated how much storage she had left on her phone and had to permanently delete dozens of photos of her grandma’s birthday because she saw a cool sunset and felt compelled to attempt to capture its essence digitally.
“The archival crisis is all about permanently losing good things in order to make way for more mediocre things in the future,” she said, in what reporters felt was the wrong takeaway from this entire ordeal.
