Pics or It Didn't Happen
may - june 2024 iPhone photos / on "when"
When do you feel inclined to take a photo?
Every two months, I use this space to share recent images from my iPhone camera roll, something Facebook used to call muploads, that these days some might call a photo dump. I’ve been curious about the process of photo sharing: what photos I opt to share, when I choose to share them, to where or with who?
Only recently, I begin to ask myself (and all of you) the above question - slowing down the photographic process further to the moment of the image’s inception. What drives you to open the camera app (or peek through the viewfinder)?
My camera roll is the external hard drive for my memory. But the more photos I take, the less I remember. This collection is a series of moments I felt desperate to retain, but also to portray my everyday life with a specific aesthetic. Like this is something I want to remember forever, and I want to remember it in this specific way — only what is depicted in my frame, from this angle, in this light, void of the emotions that informed the taking of the photo in the first place.
When I open the camera app,
I am bearing witness to something,
something so [ Â Â Â Â Â Â ]
that I feel an overwhelming
compulsion to capture it.
You know it’s impossible to take a picture of the full moon hung like a grapefruit in the dim sky over an open field through the open passenger seat window. You know it’s impossible to photograph a life. My camera roll makes my days look like a saccharine movie and isn’t that the best kind of gift I can give myself? To remember the laughter at the ice cream shop and forget the day seven unwashed hair, the puffy eyes from crying all morning? These iPhone photo essays are underlined three times with joy. It’s that joy I cannot stand to lose when I pull out my phone.
Tell me. When do you feel inclined to take a photo? What’s the count on your camera roll? When you scroll back through, what is missing?
I love this essay by Haley Nahman about her observations on the relationship between her memory and her camera roll. I was particularly impressed by the ziploc bag in the sea tactic. I notice a feeling of relief that my suffering of compulsive documentation is not unique to me.
