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# Reshoot Your Archives
- URL: https://www.cjchilvers.com/blog/reshoot-your-archives/
- Published: 2012-01-10T11:50:02.000Z
- Updated: 2012-01-10T11:50:02.000Z
- Author: CJ Chilvers
- Tags: photography, archivism, film

My best friend, [Tom](http://www.flickr.com/people/whtsoxfan/?ref=cjchilvers.com), had a house fire in the 90s that destroyed all of his photos and negatives (during his most prolific period as an enthusiastic young hobbyist). As a result, he developed an entirely different way of approaching archivism and we all could learn something from it.

Recently, I was talking about my own archives from that same period and how I was going to deal with scanning the thousands of negatives I had amassed. I wanted to create a digital archive I could easily back up to avoid the same destruction Tom faced.

Tom advised me to revisit the places in those negatives and produce something better than I had produced back then. Then, throw away the old negatives. He gave me a few hundred new projects in under 5 seconds and I couldn’t wait to get started.

Life is fleeting and you can’t take your archives with you. Chances are, no one will tend to them even a few years after you’re gone. The real value in photography is an appreciation of the present.