I used to be an avid watcher of Ebay. I would scout for items that I thought I wanted virtually every day, tracking bidding on some items to see, I told myself, what the going prices were and maybe, when nobody was looking, to place a bid. I have now found that I have lost interest because I have virtually everything I have ever wished I had and any that I do not have are probably more than I want to spend. I guess soon I will become an Ebay vendor rather than a purchaser and hope that I can sell no longer wanted possessions for more than I paid.
There was an interesting article (read it here) in the Daily Mail on 20th April by Ray Connolly. It is an article that I totally sympathise with, that "We all risk losing our most precious memories". His comments are not directed specifically, although mainly, towards photographs but also towards vinyl records and books. He refers to the touch, the feel, the smell and the physical ownership of treasured possessions and the memories associated with their ownership.
In our modern times, where ownership is solely of a string of zeros and ones stored in a damage prone format, such that we cannot actually see our array of valuable memories that future generations will not be able to decipher, if indeed the data survives that long. Books, that have their covers torn and stained, tell their own story. Vinyl records that have suffered from a splash of beer and now crackle whenever the needle passes over bring back memories of a wonderful party. By storing music and books in electronic format, all one's memories can be totally destroyed in a nano second by a careless drop onto the floor or a splash of beer. They can be lost if a tablet computer is left on a train, or if some uncaring person takes a liking to what is not theirs but yours. You can go out and buy another tablet but you cannot buy back those memories.
As a young child, I had a 78 rpm gramophone record -"I Tawt I Taw A Puddy Tat" with Tweety the canary and his nemesis Sylvester the cat. It was very brittle, as I found out when it shattered into many pieces when I trod on it. I was distraught. That memory is of a specific loss which I can recount vividly, not only of what I'd lost, but of how I'd lost it and of my distress at loosing it. If it had been a tablet computer with many memories, I could never recount what I had actually lost. We live in a disposable world, things soon have no value, something better is the new must have.
We cannot afford to lose our whole life's memories because future family generations will never know what our life was like, how we enjoyed ourselves and how we cared about our loved ones. But there is hope, vinyl records are making a comeback, let's hope that film does not disappear for ever.
It has been mentioned in the German press that a new company, DW Photo GmbH, registered on 25th June 2015 will be based in the DHW/Rollei premises in Braunschweig. It is not yet clear what they will produce, some suggest TLRs, some say the Hy6 and 6008.
Contents:
Front Cover: "Katy takes the Biscuit" by Michael Coles.
3 In Passing by David Morgan
4 Kunststück.of by Volker Muth
8 Mike Anson's Sundowners - views from my verandah and elsewhere
12 Ainsley Harriott's Rolleiflex
13 Postal Auction No.11 results
14 The Ridley Mill Wheel by Philip Warren A.R.P.S.
18 From the National Media Museum Archives
20 Close Focusing and Parallax by David Morgan and John Wild
28 Your Forum
30 E6 Colour Reversal Processing by David Morgan
31 Rollei Circular Tripod Head 1957 by Carlos M. Freaza
31 Harry Kitchen's Chuckle Corner
Rear Cover: Local panoramas by John Wild
