It's done. My Great Slide Scanning Project. In three weeks.
And what an undertaking. Even after some pretty ruthless weeding last May, I still had an estimated 1,200 slides. This was way too large a number to tackle casually, just whenever I might had an odd moment. It needed an extended effort, undistracted by a normal social life. But one of the silver linings of a lockdown (and the near-lockdown conditions in Tier 2 that have followed) is that the opportunity is created for getting on with really big tasks. So finally on 21st November I set to, firing up my scanner on most days until I'd digitised all of these slides. The last was scanned yesterday evening. Here it is.
My initial estimate of 1,200 slides wasn't far off. In the end, 1,273 slides were scanned. Most of them (about 1,050) related to the 1980s, with 225-odd datable to the 1960s and 1970s.
It's a fair question to ask why I bothered! It's obviously good to have extra shots of holiday places, and of family and friends. But all these shots were taken at least thirty years ago, and in some cases as much as fifty-five years ago. What possible relevance can they have today? In particular, why do I want to have pictures of myself in my married days (which ended unhappily in divorce), or of my routine life in London (a place I never liked)? It's not so easy to reply.
I can assert that the historian in me demands that photographic evidence - if it exists - needs to be preserved and made accessible - and then studied with a discerning eye. Relevance to my present life doesn't really come into it. Any historic shot is potentially valuable, even if apparently mundane, such as pictures of suburban scenes, and past domestic endeavours like making a fish pond in the back garden of my London home. I have shots of shopping parades; they may not be exciting, but they do conjure up an everyday world long gone. I have shots of the clothes I wore - those 1980s styles were rather good - and cars I used to drive (not so good!). But I'm sure that any social historian would find something significant in these shots. I'm glad I didn't throw them away, and have now added them to the Archive.
Of course, the scans have also sharpened up hazy personal memories, and corrected any skew that may have developed from incomplete recollection. For I had forgotten a lot of the detail. It was a welcome exercise in precise rediscovery. I was surprised to find that many pictures from my 1983 honeymoon had survived, and at this remove, when all of that has long passed into history, I'm now pleased that they weren't thrown away - especially as I don't have any of the official wedding photos. Anything that records some aspect of my life is to be cherished. Photographs can bring it back.
There are many shots of the homes I had, providing useful evidence for the age of many a current possession, such as a book or a vase. It's also amusing to see what some of the 'old tech' looked like: the kitchen equipment, the TV in the lounge, the VHS video recorder, the rows of VHS tapes on bookshelves, some bought, some home-produced. This was all before home computers, and streaming from the Internet. And the film cameras! Those little 110 cameras, and everyone using flash indoors - although you had to, with the slow slide or print film of the time.
Of course, the people in these pictures are naturally the main focus. I've disinterred many a great shot of the people I used to know. Sadly, some of the older ones have passed away, and even the younger faces will now be getting middle-aged. It's fascinating to view them now on my laptop. As I scanned these pictures, I couldn't help growing wistful - the photos, vivid in many cases, had rekindled the old fondness for my former sisters in law, and others, and had brought to mind many a celebration. I lost much when the marriage shipwrecked.
But that was then. The present reality - thirty, thirty-five, forty years on - might be distressingly different. We all gradually change as we get older, our outlook as much as our appearance. I can't take it for granted that some cheerful, lively, fun-loving person I once knew would still be the same. They might have become soured and embittered by their later experiences, and maimed with bad health.
Nor do I know how I would be remembered. I do believe that I was well-regarded and adequately loved back in the 1980s. The scans surely say so. But I can't assume that I would be joyfully received now, in 2020, by a person I last saw decades ago. I suspect that they might, if older than me, have caustic things to say - resentful of my good health, lack of dependents, and freedom to do as I please. Above all, for not being in touch sooner. And why get in touch at all, they might say? What's my motive? Why stir up dusty old memories?
Well, the slides are finished, and a Humungous Print Scanning Project now awaits. But first I'm going to give myself a decent break. I might not do any further scanning until the New Year, or even until late in 2021 - a task for next winter. It all depends on how things go post-Christmas. If there are more lockdowns, then I have a ready-made project to get on with, this time covering the 1990s. But it will take a lot more than three weeks to complete, as there are 5,000-odd prints to scan. I'll have to be ruthless again, and ditch a lot of them before firing up the scanner at all.
Meanwhile, I've been pitching the slides into a waste-paper bin after captioning the scan. Every one. I've discarded even the slides from my very first film in 1965, which you'd expect me to feel sentimental about.
But it's the image that deserves the sentiment, not the slide, and I'd much rather have the digital version of a treasured picture. That way I can carry it around with me, and summon it up instantly on my phone or my laptop, rather than search for it in a slide box that has to be stored at home, and only there. And besides, a digital file can be backed up on external drives, and in the Cloud, so that it need never be lost. So much better than handling a small dusty slide that could so easily get damaged, and will fade in time.
It's pointless holding onto an original slide, once it's scanned. It can be safely junked. Here's picture of that waste-paper bin, full of discarded slides for tomorrow's landfill collection. It makes a good picture in itself.
