It's possible to "look back" at the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century though the "hard copy" photos (prints, negatives, slides) that have been left behind by those who shot them, whether pro or amateur.
Even photographs that might have had "a connection to the shooter only" can still be interesting and informative. We may not know who took the pic, or why, but the pic itself still exists as an image to be viewed.
Within a family, such pictures were "passed on" to the younger ones. Downstairs we have a picture of my Dad on a tricycle, must have been taken around 1932 or so. It's faded and old, but it still "exists to be seen".
Doing so from the Twenty-First Century onward is going to become much more difficult, and in many cases simply impossible. Where are those personal/family pics today?
On smartphones and iPads or Androids, accessible only to the user. No user = no access.
Or on computers "as files" -- many or most of which will be lost after the death of the owner, perhaps even before (from "crashes" for which backups don't exist).
With the exception of those photos that exist "in the public record", I sense that the overwhelming majority of photos taken by private individuals are simply going to "disappear" with their owners.
The result is that those who live in the future will have "less of a photographic record of the times" (that we live in now), than they have of those who lived in the two centuries previous.
Is there something that could be done to "preserve" at least some of the images we take today for future generations to browse through?
I've got some ideas...
