I appreciated the essay. As a now obsolete, redundant & retired magazine photographer, 75 years old,(Vancouver 1975 until a few years ago when magazines died) I have in mind all you write. Until five years ago when I purchased a Fuji X-E1 I had an extensive (in alphabetical order) filing system with negatives, slides and transparencies. In separate flats I have my best printed by me archival prints in good photographic paper. Now with the digital camera I only take jpgs. I use 8 GB cards. When I almost fill them or when I travel I retire them into my files. I have the photographs in those cards downloaded into my exterior hard drive.

But in the end there is this. Our moribund Vancouver Sun a few weeks back donated 2 million negs, etc to the Vancouver Archives. I know that in the 80s their photographers shot colour negative (highly ustable even if refrigerated). I made the math, three or four minutes per scan….What this means is that our local paper has passed the buck.

I had an architecture friend who before he died at 82 would often say to me, “After me the deluge. I am no longer for this world and I am glad of it.” How important is one’s legacy when one is dead?