It’s been very hot and very dry in the Bow Valley. Late August usually means rain, sometimes snow, but not this year. A Banff Park proscribed burn was initiated in April and should have been naturally extinguished by now instead of leaping from dry fir to dry spruce, engulfing hydro poles, and throwing the town of Banff into blackout.

RCMP officers are holding up the traffic between Banff town and Canmore. We’re inching through thick, noxious, suffocating fog. This fire is only a few minutes away from Harvey Heights, a small community that nestles against the Banff Park boundary near the Highway 1 entrance gates. The Harvey Heights homes are built right into the forest. Their asphalt-shingled roofs make them big tinderboxes.

‘Barb went in and took out the photographs,’ says Sepp Reiner. He and his wife run Assiniboine Lodge, high in the mountains 50 km south of Harvey Heights, and their Harvey Heights home is a five-minute drive away from a wall of flame. ‘Everything else can be replaced, but not the pictures. Insurance can’t replace the photos.’

In fact, many victims of the B.C. and Alberta forest fires could be seen on the national news clutching their boxes and books of photos, standing as testament to the power of the photographic medium. They had the chance to select one item of value to them, and inevitably the photos won.

Photography is a powerful medium because its content is permanent. I didn’t see anyone rescuing TV sets, radios, computers, or hi-speed modems from their burning homes. If the picture tube blows up, the missed TV show can be seen later. If the radio melts and the top-of-the-hour newscast is lost, no problem; there’s another newscast at the top of the next hour. If the laptop turns into a toxic pool of Pentium III chips, you can rebuild the database somehow.

But when the pictures turn to flame, the images are gone forever. We even witnessed consumers interchanging the words ‘pictures’ and ‘memories’ in the news clips. Could it be that the photographic medium is so powerful it has led to humans’ inability to differentiate between memory and photo? Has photography replaced memory? If so, that would make photography the first bionic mass medium, insomuch as it has replaced an organic function.

In addition to being powerful and permanent, the medium of photography is overwhelmed by its own content. Its transmission system is the content. Take away newspaper content and you’re left with blank paper. Take away radio content and you’re left with a set. But take the pictures out of photography and you’re left with nothing.

Photography’s uniqueness also stems from that fact that it’s a closed loop communication system. The source of the photo is very often the receiver of the content. Pictures are, more often than not, taken for the edification of the picture-taker. To this extent, the consumer is totally in charge of the content of the photographic medium.

We usually attribute this characteristic to the newest and most ‘techie’ of media… the Internet or interactive TV or personal video recorders. The good old camera is in the hands of millions of consumers who go about personalizing content. It’s a level of user control the other media can only dream of replicating.

Oh, and here’s one more distinguishing characteristic. Consumers spend their own money to purchase the camera, the film, and the processing. And then, unlike other mass media, they view the results commercial-free.

It seems a shame we don’t have access to this old, powerful, permanent, content rich and user-controlled medium called photography. But maybe it’s for the best. I’m not sure I’d want to be the planner responsible for putting my client’s message between a mother and baby’s first picture – especially if it’s the only thing saved from a burning home.

Rob Young is one of the founders of Toronto’s PHD Canada (formerly HYPN). He can be reached at: ryoung@phdca.com.