Profound essay on the meaning of documenting our lives. I used to do this much more rigorously when I was younger and had more time on my hands- I kept scrapbooks filled with paper artifacts of events and people in my life. I am glad I did and sorry that I did not keep up this practice, or take more photos when I was younger. Now of course I have the opposite problem. With a phone in my camera I take way too many.
I am old enough to remember sitting in paneled basements and watching Kodak carousel slide shows of Aunt Tilly's trip to Bermuda. Believe me, social media is better!
It's always a conundrum what to do with photos and family memorabilia when inheritors don't care or when one doesn't have inheritors. It's something we discuss quite a bit in the family history community here on Substack. (For those interested in preservation, @Kathy Stone is a good person to follow.)
Another thing I always think about is how taking a photo will often shape my memory of a person or a place (not a person or place I know well, but more peripheral people and places I only visited a few times). I have many memories of people and trips that have faded because the photo holds that place. I wish there were a word for this phenomenon.
Thanks Lisa. I think I have been just stunned by how different people are in the ways they do or don’t document. I am thankful to know the many different ways and how people approach it (even slide carousels in the past). Also, the phenomenon you're describing is close to something documented in The Memory Illusion by Julia Shaw. I came across it while researching this piece if you want to look it up.
I’ve been shooting my travels for decades and I never regret it nor consider leaving the camera (or phone) home. Whether I publicly share my images or not, I DO refer to them: to re-enjoy a place and time, to fact-check myself (“…Was it Hawaii in 2007 where I saw that cool basket weaver?”) or to simply enjoy the images. I am solidly in the camp that believes I really see a place by taking photos. You did a great job of exploring this!
Well, as I recently discovered, because of my aphantasia my photos are my memories. So, yes, I would still travel but even without being able to take pictures, but it would be very upsetting.
Completely agree, and I think your perspective on this is very important. That's actually why I linked your piece in the footnotes as it helped me understand Jeremy's reply in a way I wouldn't have otherwise.
Photographs are pictorial historical evidence, amongst many other things. When I travel solo, my camera doesn’t just create this kind of output, but it’s a tool to talk to people and to interact.
As a child in the 60’s, I lived two years in Cali, Colombia. My father had been one of the university photographers at SJSU and so brought all his camera and recording equipment to Cali. If not for those photos of family, our school, friends, and places we visited, my memories would be so vague and without substance. We on occasion bring out the slides for a family remembrance evening and the stories and events are brought back to life. My father is gone and my mother is quite elderly, yet my sisters and I continue to pepper her with questions about that time and the photos and slides and movies all help. I’m not sure why it’s so important to remember the details except that that time shaped me in ways that continue to this day and I don’t want to lose it. I’m experiencing a bit of saudade, that melancholy longing for a time and people who are no longer with us. Here’s to the photos we’ll always have.
I pay essentially a small mortgage in storage unit fees to house my mother’s photo albums. Today, I hauled six of them up to show their best friends, my children, and a the former owners of the ranch my family had for years what the property looked like in its best years. Today, cabins are falling down, the flower beds my mother lovingly planted are gone, the pool where we spent hours as kids has been torn out, my parents have passed away.
But, as we poured over those albums and my children saw the place that I spent so many happy moments of my childhood, I thought “this is what these photos are for.”
I have a camera with me almost everywhere I go, and I take and share plenty of pictures. But there are a few specific times/events where I've made a conscious effort to put the experience above the photographs. The 4th of July is the main one that comes to mind. For the past 5 or 6 years I've been pretty good about taking/sharing a maximum of one or two shots (mostly involving the people watching the fireworks), but otherwise just enjoying the show myself.
Sometimes, after the fact, I wish I had made a similar pledge. At my daughter's recent high school graduation I spent almost the entire time watching everything through a lens. I had to be reminded at one point to stop for a second some that someone else could take at least one picture of my daughter and I together.
In the coming years I'm sure I'll be glad I have those pictures. But right now I wish I'd seen more with must my eyes.
It’s always a trade off and without kids I haven’t had to do that math on a milestone like that and can only imagine how difficult the trade off actually is. Thanks, Todd.
I was thinking about this yesterday, Scott. I did a hike, not widely known on the travel circuit, but one that could be huge in today's social media environment. I truly vacillated between, documenting it for myself and my memories (because I won't remember many aspects besides the summit and prime viewpoints weeks from now) and "fuck it" I want to throw my phone off the precipice and live a life of fresh, clean, undisturbed alpine air.
But... I do constantly question why I take photos. Even my dance career has changed, we now take videos and photos of choreography to 'remember' when originally all we had was our muscle memory and notebooks.
Perhaps, as humans, we are prone to document our lives and our photos are just the latest medium to do so... I'm not sure.
I think it has just become so difficult without constraints on the amount of photos to judge what and how many to take. Even if I wasn’t going to share something like your hike publicly I feel like I would still want to take more than I should to show my wife but even then the photos would likely not even do it justice. I also really appreciate your comment on the dancing it’s something I never would have thought of but it makes so much sense and has likely changed your ‘work experience’ so much. Do they use it to critique the performances after the fact too?
As family historians, we spend so much time looking backwards through the photographs left behind by others, often wishing there were more of them. This story is such a beautiful reminder that we never really know which ordinary photograph will become extraordinary to someone decades later.
I definitely look more closely when I am trying to capture a moment: the skeletal hawthorn tree standing over a tombstone; the beauty of the coast of Cefalu; the streets of Lisbon. I often forget to take pictures of people because I am so caught up in the moment.
I've mulled over this a few times. there's probably some element of intent involved, if someone is just posting selfies to the grid for clout, feels little like we could all go without that haha. I guess we'll just have to pass down our iCloud logins to our nieces and nephews instead of a couple boxes of film...that sounds depressing hahah
The intent in taking is an important part, as is the intent in not taking a shot as well, I suppose.
The passing down is something that definitely concerns me, I mean if something happened to me and my wife while I was still “young”, there are lateral moves. But nieces or nephews getting logins and hard drives from “that crazy uncle who lives overseas” is just so odd to me. Almost a burden in a sense, given my library outside of all the family scans.
Scott! A beautiful and thoughtful story tied to your mother ❤️ I definitely find that photographing makes it much more enjoyable when it takes place and years after. Wherever there is interesting, beautiful, raw, cute, sad or just real moments I'm there to frame it. I don't at all see the contradiction between being the moment and shooting it. Always bringing my camera or my phone on my walks be it back home or while travelling.
Thanks, Stina. I am glad that you get so much joy from it, and I'll add here, as I know how you shoot, the camera can probably act as a way to otherwise engage with people you might otherwise just walk past. Something I had not really thought about yet in regard to this.
That’s it, by taking photos of varioussituations, I generally need to ask for permission and by doing that I engage with all people I meet, it’s the best!!!
Today we found a circular staircase in our hotel in Slovakia, my husband climbed it, it was followed by another and then a ladder. There was a lovely little tower at the top. I probably wont forget but the photos I took as he disappeared and reappeared will make me smile time and again !
Enjoyed reading this and the comments. Some wonder why I take so many photos with my iPhone. Usually they are of graffiti, trash cans, people's shoes, colors, old signs, cool clouds, etc. A few family photos/videos are included as well. I almost never take photos of famous landmarks. To me, that's boring. I like to find the weird, whimsical, and wonder in the world. Having my iPhone at ready is how I do that. If I couldn't travel without any kind of camera, I would still enjoy it and be grateful I wasn't adding more pics to the cloud, but afterward, I would feel there was something missing. I am a person who goes through my photos often, reliving the experience, marveling at a cool shot, thinking about a reel I might make. Still, I've recently had dreams about missing the perfect shot; my phone camera didn't work, it took too long to open, the image never came out, etc. Perhaps that is a bad sign.
Thanks, Susan. This is very close to how I use my phone camera, too. Those things are what bring stories to life later and what I tend to search for if writing a piece from a few months or a year ago if I didn't write it down. Regarding the dreams, I found some research while writing this that shows that once you're carrying a camera, your brain enters almost a different mode focused on getting the perfect shot, and when it fails, it feels worse than if you'd never had it at all.
A fascinating and thought provoking article. The statistics are interesting.
I often wonder what becomes of the innumerable photos taken every day by almost everybody.
I use my photos as notes or a sort of aide memoire. They become very useful when I am writing about tra el and history.
Thank you. Yes, I wonder this as well and what will happen to all those images in the future. I am glad they aid you in your writing!
Profound essay on the meaning of documenting our lives. I used to do this much more rigorously when I was younger and had more time on my hands- I kept scrapbooks filled with paper artifacts of events and people in my life. I am glad I did and sorry that I did not keep up this practice, or take more photos when I was younger. Now of course I have the opposite problem. With a phone in my camera I take way too many.
I am old enough to remember sitting in paneled basements and watching Kodak carousel slide shows of Aunt Tilly's trip to Bermuda. Believe me, social media is better!
It's always a conundrum what to do with photos and family memorabilia when inheritors don't care or when one doesn't have inheritors. It's something we discuss quite a bit in the family history community here on Substack. (For those interested in preservation, @Kathy Stone is a good person to follow.)
Another thing I always think about is how taking a photo will often shape my memory of a person or a place (not a person or place I know well, but more peripheral people and places I only visited a few times). I have many memories of people and trips that have faded because the photo holds that place. I wish there were a word for this phenomenon.
Thanks Lisa. I think I have been just stunned by how different people are in the ways they do or don’t document. I am thankful to know the many different ways and how people approach it (even slide carousels in the past). Also, the phenomenon you're describing is close to something documented in The Memory Illusion by Julia Shaw. I came across it while researching this piece if you want to look it up.
I will definitely look it up! Thanks!
I’ve been shooting my travels for decades and I never regret it nor consider leaving the camera (or phone) home. Whether I publicly share my images or not, I DO refer to them: to re-enjoy a place and time, to fact-check myself (“…Was it Hawaii in 2007 where I saw that cool basket weaver?”) or to simply enjoy the images. I am solidly in the camp that believes I really see a place by taking photos. You did a great job of exploring this!
Thanks, Aaron. I need that kind of fact check myself from time to time 😅 and can only assume that will get truer with age.
Well, as I recently discovered, because of my aphantasia my photos are my memories. So, yes, I would still travel but even without being able to take pictures, but it would be very upsetting.
Completely agree, and I think your perspective on this is very important. That's actually why I linked your piece in the footnotes as it helped me understand Jeremy's reply in a way I wouldn't have otherwise.
That's what I get for not reading footnotes! 🥸🥸🥸
It’s the small print after all, should have linked you in line.
No worries!
Photographs are pictorial historical evidence, amongst many other things. When I travel solo, my camera doesn’t just create this kind of output, but it’s a tool to talk to people and to interact.
You’re definitely right. The camera is a great tool to interact with people.
As a child in the 60’s, I lived two years in Cali, Colombia. My father had been one of the university photographers at SJSU and so brought all his camera and recording equipment to Cali. If not for those photos of family, our school, friends, and places we visited, my memories would be so vague and without substance. We on occasion bring out the slides for a family remembrance evening and the stories and events are brought back to life. My father is gone and my mother is quite elderly, yet my sisters and I continue to pepper her with questions about that time and the photos and slides and movies all help. I’m not sure why it’s so important to remember the details except that that time shaped me in ways that continue to this day and I don’t want to lose it. I’m experiencing a bit of saudade, that melancholy longing for a time and people who are no longer with us. Here’s to the photos we’ll always have.
Thank you for this great comment and for reading. This is exactly why those photos matter.
I’m looking forward to reading more from you.
I pay essentially a small mortgage in storage unit fees to house my mother’s photo albums. Today, I hauled six of them up to show their best friends, my children, and a the former owners of the ranch my family had for years what the property looked like in its best years. Today, cabins are falling down, the flower beds my mother lovingly planted are gone, the pool where we spent hours as kids has been torn out, my parents have passed away.
But, as we poured over those albums and my children saw the place that I spent so many happy moments of my childhood, I thought “this is what these photos are for.”
I agree it is powerful to revisit memories in this way (physical media curated as your relative (mother) intended.
I love looking at my photos from everyday life and travel.
I have a camera with me almost everywhere I go, and I take and share plenty of pictures. But there are a few specific times/events where I've made a conscious effort to put the experience above the photographs. The 4th of July is the main one that comes to mind. For the past 5 or 6 years I've been pretty good about taking/sharing a maximum of one or two shots (mostly involving the people watching the fireworks), but otherwise just enjoying the show myself.
Sometimes, after the fact, I wish I had made a similar pledge. At my daughter's recent high school graduation I spent almost the entire time watching everything through a lens. I had to be reminded at one point to stop for a second some that someone else could take at least one picture of my daughter and I together.
In the coming years I'm sure I'll be glad I have those pictures. But right now I wish I'd seen more with must my eyes.
It’s always a trade off and without kids I haven’t had to do that math on a milestone like that and can only imagine how difficult the trade off actually is. Thanks, Todd.
I was thinking about this yesterday, Scott. I did a hike, not widely known on the travel circuit, but one that could be huge in today's social media environment. I truly vacillated between, documenting it for myself and my memories (because I won't remember many aspects besides the summit and prime viewpoints weeks from now) and "fuck it" I want to throw my phone off the precipice and live a life of fresh, clean, undisturbed alpine air.
But... I do constantly question why I take photos. Even my dance career has changed, we now take videos and photos of choreography to 'remember' when originally all we had was our muscle memory and notebooks.
Perhaps, as humans, we are prone to document our lives and our photos are just the latest medium to do so... I'm not sure.
I think it has just become so difficult without constraints on the amount of photos to judge what and how many to take. Even if I wasn’t going to share something like your hike publicly I feel like I would still want to take more than I should to show my wife but even then the photos would likely not even do it justice. I also really appreciate your comment on the dancing it’s something I never would have thought of but it makes so much sense and has likely changed your ‘work experience’ so much. Do they use it to critique the performances after the fact too?
Yes, it’s a different world from a management perspective (dance captain, artistic director etc) with such easy and frequent visual documentation.
Fascinating!
As family historians, we spend so much time looking backwards through the photographs left behind by others, often wishing there were more of them. This story is such a beautiful reminder that we never really know which ordinary photograph will become extraordinary to someone decades later.
Thanks Paul, this is such a great perspective.
I definitely look more closely when I am trying to capture a moment: the skeletal hawthorn tree standing over a tombstone; the beauty of the coast of Cefalu; the streets of Lisbon. I often forget to take pictures of people because I am so caught up in the moment.
There is art in all of those moments if you look closely like this!
I've mulled over this a few times. there's probably some element of intent involved, if someone is just posting selfies to the grid for clout, feels little like we could all go without that haha. I guess we'll just have to pass down our iCloud logins to our nieces and nephews instead of a couple boxes of film...that sounds depressing hahah
The intent in taking is an important part, as is the intent in not taking a shot as well, I suppose.
The passing down is something that definitely concerns me, I mean if something happened to me and my wife while I was still “young”, there are lateral moves. But nieces or nephews getting logins and hard drives from “that crazy uncle who lives overseas” is just so odd to me. Almost a burden in a sense, given my library outside of all the family scans.
Scott! A beautiful and thoughtful story tied to your mother ❤️ I definitely find that photographing makes it much more enjoyable when it takes place and years after. Wherever there is interesting, beautiful, raw, cute, sad or just real moments I'm there to frame it. I don't at all see the contradiction between being the moment and shooting it. Always bringing my camera or my phone on my walks be it back home or while travelling.
Thanks, Stina. I am glad that you get so much joy from it, and I'll add here, as I know how you shoot, the camera can probably act as a way to otherwise engage with people you might otherwise just walk past. Something I had not really thought about yet in regard to this.
That’s it, by taking photos of varioussituations, I generally need to ask for permission and by doing that I engage with all people I meet, it’s the best!!!
It is!
Today we found a circular staircase in our hotel in Slovakia, my husband climbed it, it was followed by another and then a ladder. There was a lovely little tower at the top. I probably wont forget but the photos I took as he disappeared and reappeared will make me smile time and again !
Sounds like a great memory, Gilly!
Enjoyed reading this and the comments. Some wonder why I take so many photos with my iPhone. Usually they are of graffiti, trash cans, people's shoes, colors, old signs, cool clouds, etc. A few family photos/videos are included as well. I almost never take photos of famous landmarks. To me, that's boring. I like to find the weird, whimsical, and wonder in the world. Having my iPhone at ready is how I do that. If I couldn't travel without any kind of camera, I would still enjoy it and be grateful I wasn't adding more pics to the cloud, but afterward, I would feel there was something missing. I am a person who goes through my photos often, reliving the experience, marveling at a cool shot, thinking about a reel I might make. Still, I've recently had dreams about missing the perfect shot; my phone camera didn't work, it took too long to open, the image never came out, etc. Perhaps that is a bad sign.
Thanks, Susan. This is very close to how I use my phone camera, too. Those things are what bring stories to life later and what I tend to search for if writing a piece from a few months or a year ago if I didn't write it down. Regarding the dreams, I found some research while writing this that shows that once you're carrying a camera, your brain enters almost a different mode focused on getting the perfect shot, and when it fails, it feels worse than if you'd never had it at all.
Thank you! I never knew about that brain research, but it makes sense.