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The Death of Paper

For over 2 years I’ve been traveling up to a small village in Wales that used to be a mining town to make photographs.

The old mine, houses a couple of government warehouses that hold all the trademarks, patents and (in my eyes) ideas that people have deemed worthy of recording, within the UK since the beginning of Intellectual property law, so early 1700’s.

It’s a humble place, run by humble people. Quiet, beautiful and still.

When I stop to think of the sheer amount of human thought that is stored there it blows me away. I’ve been trying to make work up there that talks about how fucking interesting it is to me. It’s essentially a lot of paper stacked on tall shelves and I wonder if photography is the right medium?

Slowly the warehouse is being digitized.

Every time I visit, another one of the huge shelves is empty as they slowly scan and destroy the paper.

This ‘tangible’ (paper) that documents the ‘intangible’ (thoughts), was originally created to root an idea in the ‘real world’ so ownership could be claimed. It seems now in our digital times it’s now acceptable for the intangible to be, well intangible.

The death of paper.