What happens when an analog and print-based media archives closes its doors? The sprawling space, previously stuffed wall to wall with curiosities and their keepers, sits empty. Countless boxes, cans, tape cases and folders stuffed with imagery – some of it historic – warehoused at an undisclosed location to be seen rarely, if ever, again. A global leader in film, print, and video archiving and distribution (to remain unnamed) recently closed the doors of its New York City-based storage facility. Closing a space of this sort represents the company’s abandonment of all things analog, as well as another irreparable break in the chain of film photography and film production.
This (digital) photography project is concerned with the physical spaces as well as the job descriptions that have been left behind in the name of technology. No longer in need of endless shelves, aluminum cans and archival boxes, the collection now fits quietly on sleek hard drives. Once industry standard, sculpturally beautiful machines – projectors, splicers, editing tables – now exist only as museum objects. And then there are the people: the negative cutter no longer has negative to cut, the tape dubber has no tape to dub. Now both, and others like them, must become ‘content specialists’ or, subject to Darwin’s principal, cease to exist.
Content Specialist Gerry Post, who posed for the project, recently looked back on his career from the vantage point of his newly minted flat screen computer monitor.
My first job was in 1960, apprenticing for an editor at Trident Films, and, this may sound stupid, but, I miss touching the film. It gave you more of a feeling of doing the work. When you touched film, working on a Steenbeck flatbed or Moviola, and you held the film in you hand, and it would roll in your hand…it was a good feeling, a closeness to the project. A work-print would get cut, torn, taped back up with grease pencils marking where new cuts would go, dirt on the film, you could see the work put in, literally, you could see the work on the film. It’s cleaner now. It’s much cleaner now. Which is a good thing, I suppose.
photography : todd warnock
creative direction : tim sutton
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