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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, JANUARY 13, 2017
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Rebecca Sedlak | Weekend Editor
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SAVING MEMORIES
BUILDING PHOTO ARCHIVES, SELLING THEM OFF AND WHY IT MATTERS
By MATT WINTERS
EO Media Group
When it
comes to
images in
which we
have a strong
emotional
investment,
I believe
an actual
physical
photo is
always best.
S
ince tromping around the Argentine
Andes together many years ago, my
adventures have become steadily more
bland while Zbigniew Bzdak’s are dazzling
and profound. As a lead pho-
tographer for the Chicago
Tribune, Zbigniew had a
front-row spot for President
Obama’s farewell address
this week. This is because
his sharp eyes, expansive
mind and decades of training make him capa-
ble of reliably documenting the most important
events of our age.
If it were up to me and Zbigniew, all hon-
orable lives would merit the same lavish atten-
tion usually conferred only on the powerful
and beautiful. Back in the 1980s, one of his
best photo essays documented the work of itin-
erant sheepherders, capturing their dignity in
ways that should reverberate down the corri-
dors of time. Humble people, they nevertheless
were recipients of the most consequential gift:
Being remembered.
Zbigniew is exceptional. But viewing the
job of recording life as a near-sacred responsi-
bility is woven into the personalities of all seri-
ous press photographers. They are members
of a sort of priesthood of light, though few of
them would ever be so pretentious to say so.
This is true even here, where a pantheon of
talented photographers at The Daily Astorian
and Chinook Observer have labored in one of
the newsiest and dramatic locales on the conti-
nent. The legacy of images they have created
in the course of routine — and some would say
underpaid — newspaper assignments will long
outlive us all. Centuries from now, if our lives
on this remote coastline are still considered in
any way, it is likely to be because of the strik-
ing images recorded by these usually ignored
men and women shooting photos. The work
of crabbers, loggers, gillnetters, store owners
and dozens of other occupations are far more
meaningful than most now realize. In our indi-
vidual boring ways, we all are vital players in
the fast-passing panorama of early 21st century
humanity.
One of my fi rst acts as editor was to person-
ally gather up thousands of feet of fi lm nega-
tives from our attic and deliver them to what is
now the Columbia Pacifi c Heritage Museum.
Though this work product is expensive to pro-
duce — I guess, for example, that the Observer
spends something approaching $50,000 a
year photographing and reporting high school
sports alone — in a sense this work is a testa-
ment belonging to the community. Hopefully,
thanks to the museum and our photographers,
distant generations will be able to see what life
was like back in the ancient mid-20th century.
D
Photos from the MATT WINTERS COLLECTION
Allan J. deLay, an Oregonian staff photographer, took this photo of Oregonian wildlife editor Jim McCool in 1954, toward the end of
McCool’s career as a Pacific Northwest journalist. It was part of an enormous photo archive sold by the newspaper a few years ago.
The switch to digital
igital photography and internet cloud
archiving have tremendously impacted
the concept of image ownership and
sharing. About a dozen years ago, we quit
using fi lm and made the switch to digital pho-
tos stored on computer hard drives — and now
in the cloud. I don’t know how or if we will
ever make those images accessible to the pub-
lic. For every photo that appears in print and
online versions of our publications, sometimes
there are hundreds of others that don’t make the
cut but which will still be interesting to some-
one. As the cost of storage comes down, it’s my
hope we may someday be able to upload com-
plete photo shoots and provide some way for
people to view them.
Newspapers grapple with this issue in a
variety of ways. A while back, the Oregonian
and its sister paper the New Orleans Times-Pic-
ayune sold off their vast photo archives to
Memphis-based HistoricImages.com, which
sells the original photos on eBay. The Orego-
nian’s parent company, Advance Publications,
retained any underlying copyrights. Part of the
deal is that HistoricImages scanned photos into
a digital format that the selling newspapers can
now try to market themselves.
“If a picture is worth a thousand words, a
Memphis company sells the equivalent of an
encyclopedia every day,” the Memphis Com-
mercial Appeal newspaper reported last year.
“HistoricImages has crammed dozens of metal
fi le cabinets in every available space of its
East Memphis offi ces. They contain millions
of hard copy photographs acquired from vari-
ous sources, most notably the archives of eight
newspapers.” Another 1.2 million of their pho-
tos were bought from the Newspaper Enter-
prise Association, part of the E.W. Scripps pub-
lishing empire.
There are many fantastic photos of the
Pacifi c Northwest available to buy from His-
toricImages. Besides the once-great Orego-
nian, the Spokane Spokesman-Review has sold
its archives. I’ve bought quite a few myself and
fi nd HistoricImages a pleasure to do business
with.
W riter’s
N otebook
Memories dispersed and shared
A
ll the same, it’s troubling to think about
these newspapers dispersing their phys-
ical archives, even if the digital ver-
sions become thus more available to the com-
puter literate. For some people, this all will be a
moot and vaguely elitist point, resembling the
revived niche market for vinyl audio records.
But as with vinyl’s ability to record subtle
sounds, in some cases the actual original pho-
tograph is a richer and more nuanced medium
than digital is capable of being.
I have thousands of both physical and dig-
ital images. Sometimes a digital photo can be
repaired and enhanced in ways a print photo
can’t be. And the digital versions are a way of
insuring memories: Hundreds of our family
photos are safe from being utterly lost in a fi re
or fl ood. They are readily available for down-
loading and printing from where they’re stored
on the web.
However, when it comes to images in which
we have a strong emotional investment, I
believe an actual physical photo is always best.
We in the news business have misplaced
some early digital photos as computer tech-
nology has changed. It’s possible to imagine
scenarios in which even today’s more sophis-
ticated storage mechanisms might fail or
become degraded. That’s not a reason to avoid
digitizing archival photos, but when there is a
hard-copy original, computers should back up
it up, not replace it.
I
Honoring the past
n the Oregonian’s case, it occupies a central
position in recording life in a state where
history is highly valued. Wouldn’t it have
been wonderful for its archives to have gone
to the Oregon Historical Society, the State
Archives, or the University of Oregon?
An Oregonian photographer was there
to record an amused World War II ship-
yard worker looking on as a boss tried
his hand at welding. As a routine aspect
of journalism, newspapers are the pri-
mary recorder of such memories. How
to best save and share these images is
a subject of debate within the industry.
One of the photos I acquired from His-
toricImages even goes directly to the Orego-
nian’s own institutional history: A large-for-
mat print of its long-time wildlife editor, James
McCool. Born in 1883 and an attendee of the
U.S. Naval Academy, McCool worked for the
O from 1921 to 1959, famously documenting
the sad fate of Ethelbert the killer whale, which
became stranded in the Columbia Slough near
Jantzen Beach in October 1931. (McCool’s
career intersected with that of The Daily Asto-
rian’s delightful and esteemed Bud Forrester,
who worked at the Oregonian as a sports writer
in the early 1930s.)
I would no more sell off a photo of a
devoted long-time staffer than I would photos
of my grandfather. But, on the other hand, the
Oregonian’s decision to sell means I’m able
to remind readers here on the coast about the
hard-working journalist Jim McCool, whose
life still deserves to be celebrated. So perhaps
there isn’t any substantial down side to their
Sandy Rock, an opener at the Newport
farm of Oregon Oyster Co., was photo-
graphed in 1975 by the Oregonian. The
photographer wasn’t identified. It is an
example of the thousands of newspaper
archive photos available from HistoricIm-
ages.com on its own website and eBay.
There are many taken in Clatsop County
and elsewhere on the coast.
archive liquidation. Only time will tell.
In closing, allow me to also mention the
loss this month of Nancy Butterfi eld, who had
a long career at the Astorian before joining me
at the Observer. She retired about a decade
ago. She, too, cared about accurately and fairly
recording the lives of ordinary people here at
the mouth of the Columbia. Though she could
be an ornery curmudgeon when it came to
interacting with editors, I never doubted that
she had her readers’ and neighbors’ best inter-
ests at heart. May she fi nd exciting scoops,
cheap smokes and lots of laughs in the great
hereafter.
Matt Winters is editor and publisher of the
Chinook Observer and Coast River Business
Journal. He lives in Ilwaco.