Talk: J. Reilly, IS&T Archiving Conf., May 2007

Archived talk

Remarks by James M. Reilly at the IS&T Archiving Conference, May 23, 2007.

The Impermanence of Permanence

I want to share with you some reflections after more than 25 years of work in the image permanence field. My thesis is that concern for the longevity of images and information waxes and wanes in interesting and sometimes unpredictable ways. Nevertheless, it is possible to make some generalizations that may be useful.

If you Google the word “permanence” the first listed item is about object permanence, which is a concept in child development first described by Swiss child psychologist Jean Piaget that occurs at about nine months of age, when infants show awareness that objects persist when they are removed from immediate sight. It’s approximately the point when “peek-a-boo” loses its fascination. I was reminded of this definition of permanence during the keynote speech for this conference by Dan Rosen of Warner Brothers, who made a similar point by showing a picture of magnetic tape and observed that, because we humans see no image there, the urgency for taking action to preserve it is reduced. He used the phrase—and it struck me as important so I wrote it down—“Lack of visualization creates lack of concern.” Perhaps if we dig deeper in Piaget’s work we’ll find him describing a phase in human development when a person just assumes that an object that’s out of sight will last forever but periodically becomes upset when he or she is told that it won’t. Or not. Sometimes it matters and sometimes it doesn’t.

Let’s start at the beginning. If you ask who invented photography, the usual answers are L.J.M. Daguerre and Henry Fox Talbot. If the respondent is a little more knowledgeable, he or she might reply that Joseph Nicephore Niepce invented photography. Actually, these are the people who invented photographic processes that had sufficient permanence to last long enough to show to someone else. Depending on whose account you want to believe, people had been making images with light for more than a century before anything stable enough to lay claim to the invention had been produced.

This bit of history is the first but definitely not the last demonstration of the first cardinal rule of permanence, namely that major new technologies almost always have permanence problems. (Any resemblance between the preceding statement and the agonizing issue of digital image preservation is purely coincidental.) However, I do warn future claimants to have invented digital imaging to be able to produce a digital file to prove it. This may mean that in the twenty-second century they’ll finally settle on 2039 or so as the date when digital imaging was invented, because that’s the oldest digital file they’ll have around.

Mention of Talbot brings us to the second cardinal rule, which has to do with making money off images and the question of how much permanence is enough. Talbot invented photography on paper, which, as we know now, meant that his process of silver images lasted long enough to get some interest from venture capitalists. In his case, he already was a wealthy nobleman, and he decided to act as his own venture capitalist. He started a business selling photographic views and reproductions of works of art. The business was known as the “Reading Establishment,” and Talbot set up the very able Thomas Malone as general manager. Malone was later part of the famous “Fading Committee” of 1855, which took on the challenge of explaining what happened next. Talbot was the first to learn the lesson that the market will punish products whose permanence is truly awful. Because the importance of fresh fixer and proper washing of prints was not understood, the Reading Establishment sent out over 1,000 sample prints as a supplement to the periodical The Art Union, which was read by the very best of British society. Because the post took more than a month to reach the far-flung and often more humid reaches of the British Isles, many subscribers found their print to be a faded, greenish-yellow mess that did not look at all like it did when it left the Establishment. Talbot was mortified and left the imaging business for good.

If the market punishes truly awful permanence, does that mean the market will work its invisible hand to guarantee that only very stable products become successful? No, absolutely not. Cardinal rule number three says that historically, technologies whose chief virtue is longevity but which also come with a premium price relative to the mainstream imaging method of the day have almost never become successful enough to dislodge the market leaders. Examples of this are legion. To name just a couple of the most prominent: In the nineteenth century the extraordinarily stable pigment images of the carbon print process were predicted to dislodge the silver print market leaders. They didn’t, mainly because carbon prints were too difficult and costly to make. In the twentieth century it was well known that silver images were unstable on their own and required the extra step of sulfur, selenium, or gold toning. Nobody much did it, and I dare say the manufacturers didn’t press the point too hard because it was extra work and trouble. Ansel Adams did it, and we love him for it. Just as we will love the sainted few who manage to have the foresight and savvy to do what it takes to make their digital images survive for a long time. Far from perpetuity—I’ll settle for a century or two. This conference makes very clear that survival of digital information is complex and costly, if it’s possible at all. That says cardinal rule number three is going to come into play in a big, big way.

One last example of cardinal rule number three: In the 1980’s, Kodak’s so-called “low-fade” color motion picture print film was offered at a 10% price premium. Nobody bought it. Later on after Martin Scorcese and others made a public fuss, the manufacturers improved stability of all their offerings. Martin Scorcese, Henry Wilhelm, and many others who raised a fuss did our society—and me personally—a favor we should thank them for. That’s the fourth cardinal rule: Fusses are helpful in stimulating the waxing phase of concern for permanence. The waning phase is human nature and takes care of itself.

Speaking about the poor permanence of chromogenic color images brings us to the present day and why I am standing before you. And it brings us back to the fifth Google entry under “permanence”: Fifth down in the Google list you will find the Image Permanence Institute at Rochester Institute of Technology, which is an academic institute co-sponsored by IS&T. IPI, as we call it for short, is devoted to research and teaching in the permanence of images and other forms of recorded information. IPI began as a response by the imaging industry to the very bad taste left by the fuss over chromogenic color dye fading. Ironically, no sooner was it founded than the fuss died down, but it was enough to give us our start. We’ve tried to educate and advocate for permanence, which brings us to the final irony, that permanence itself is impermanent, and needs tending like every other human creation.