Fewer, but good memories
08/14/2025
In conversation with our photographer Daniel Reinhard, we often talk about the fact that far fewer pictures were taken in the days of analog photography than is the case today. This applies not only to the journalistic field, but also to private life. I can well remember the first time I bought a "click-o-mat" in 1988 - an autofocus camera for the most stupid user imaginable - me!
I spent some time in France at the time to learn the language. During the three months I spent there, I filled maybe two films with 36 shots, nothing more. Later it was no different. There were at best a dozen photos from a trip. Looking back, that's a shame, if only because of the cars that could be found on the roadside at the time. On the other hand, people were much more cautious about taking pictures. In addition, the films still had to be developed. And - at least in my case - despite having a foolproof camera, it wasn't always so certain that you had actually taken 36 usable photos.
A photo from 1995 - taken by my girlfriend at the time on black and white film and therefore successful - recently came back into my hands and shows me having breakfast at the Cluds campsite in Bullet in the Vaud Jura. Of the entire tour through the Jura on both the Swiss and French sides, I have perhaps a dozen pictures left, not half of which show my bus. I look after these paper prints with the utmost care, unfortunately I can't say the same about my digital photo collection - my cell phone memory alone, together with the cloud, now contains over 50,000 images!
