ghost species

was reading in a granta of a couple years back - am roughly two years behind in my reading - a naturalist who mentioned ghost species - animals that while aren’t extinct yet, will be, as everything that they needed to survive has disappeared or been supplanted. while they may continue on in controlled environments - zoos - in the wild they are more or less awaiting the passing of the last one. a good human example of this would be the shakers.

i was reading this on my way back to peasants pissoir after a foray into chicago to buy darkroom supplies. headed into a camera shop that at one time would have everything possible to buy some oriental select vc paper. on the paper shelf that would have had not only ilford but foma, forte, and afga, as well as the ones that survived - bergger, adox, kentmere, only had ilford and a few remaining boxes of what i needed -two in fact - bought them out. asked if oriental had met the fate of other paper manufacturers. no, they simply don’t get much call for it. while waiting, i looked up at where the shelves would have been filled with pentaxes, minoltas, leicas, and hasselblad were empty.

they weren’t even replaced by their digital versions well not to the extent that it had been. so is the silver gelatine print a ghost species? the process seems trapped between the hand coated processes - platinotypes, ambrotypes, etc where the chemistry is still available, one simply has to do the compounding - and inkjet where - in the same shop - there was now more varieties than there ever were silver gelatine options.

there was the solace that photographic paper was much cheaper than inkjet but with the gap closing - the lessening of demand having photo paper soar while price wars bring down inkjet - i fear a quicker decline in choice.

i reckoned that materials would go the way that it did with movie film - available but expensive now i am not so sure about that. it seems that the new hybridisation of photography is almost complete. while it seems that film is still a necessity when anything larger than “35mm” is used, this is not the same for the print. the new work ethic - to which i only partially subscribe - seems to be film, scan, print. while i like the added options of new surfaces- especially when it comes to making books - i don’t want it to be at the expense of older ones.