Catastrophic Failure

by James Newton

A catastrophic failure is a sudden and total failure from which recovery is impossible.

Following a trip to Catania in 2016 the hard drive on which I stored my RAW files (digital negatives) corrupted. Whilst some of the data was recovered most of it was lost to a catastrophic failure.

Looking at them again has made me realise that they were not in fact ‘lost’, rather, they had become something else.

The ‘new’ images are equally as valid as those I had intended, in fact they translate something of the place and still describe the architecture and city I was photographing. They are less self conscious, less controlled and no longer chasing after an idea, some sort of photographic perfection. They also illustrate the digital landscape that we now inhabit.

They can be seen as good or bad, beautiful or ugly, meaningful or meaningless, but at least they exist.

This book is held in the Bavarian State Library collection.

38 x 29 cm
Digital newspaper
31 corrupted Photographs
1 unique inkjet print (27 x 18cm on found A4 card)
Published 2021
Open Edition