SD Card
ca. 2008
Plastic with metal plating
3cm x 2.5cm
Purchased from Best Buy, originally made in Japan
Personal collection
The SD card came into existence in 1999, through a collaboration of SanDisk, Matsushita, and Toshiba. Abbreviated from "Secure Digital Memory Card", this simple object quickly became the industry standard for digital media – storing photos, videos, files, programs, and more. Many remember the universal awe that we as a society felt, having created an alternative to floppy discs and CDs. Personally, the switch to digital memory provided me with the opportunity to purchase my first point-and-shoot digital camera, far more advanced than my father's Kodak automatic film camera. This tiny object represents a progression in technology, along with a substantial shift in how society treats photography as a field. A photo used to be captured in an instant, permanently engrained onto the film strip and unable to be erased. Now, with the advancement of SD cards (and even micro SDs), the photographer is able to extract the RAW image, edit the photo, and delete the unsatisfactory ones. This allows for quick snapshots of any moment in time, with no reason to carefully compose the scene before the shot. An SD card holds thousands of photos, compared to the standard 32 exposure film strip.
The SD card is a symbol of the present; yet that is quickly changing with the use of Bluetooth and the "Cloud" databases, where one could automatically store countless images. Like the film negatives that came before it, the SD card serves communities with the same purpose – an access to the past, to forgotten memories. Despite the SD card being a tangible object, the memories themselves are intangible. They can be duplicated, copied, edited, saved, sent to relatives through email, printed, posted on social media, etc. It is astonishing to ruminate on the sheer impact a tiny piece of plastic could have in our present society – bringing family and friends closer together no matter where in the world they are, and inspiring numerous individuals that are otherwise faceless on the Internet.
In particular, this card dates from 2008 and has been forgotten in my desk for many years. Upon re-discovering it, I inserted it into my laptop and laughed at the contents: a few hundred blurry images of rock concerts I remember being so thrilled to attend. This small tangible object brought me back to past memories, much like my film negatives. And with the importance of memories in present times (bringing us comfort and nostalgia), objects like these function as tools for individual contemplation and necessary connection for today's collective whole.
Wanda Bujaki