Remembrance of things present

At a recent war memorial ceremony last month an old WW2 digger said it was not thoughts of god or country, but the support of his mates and the memory of his wife and kids, that kept him alive.

To this day he kept the photo of his wife and child on him.

How many of us now can say, in our digital age, that we cherish our photos in this same way? In fact, when was the last time you actually printed a photograph?

If you’re like me, it wasn’t any time in the past 12 months. Where I used to take the photos and eagerly anticipate the prints, the digital camera has changed all that.

As Dushko Petrovich writes in Twilight of the colour photo, there is simply no pressing need any more to collect printed photo albums.

“The digital gems we hoard can number in the thousands, or even in the tens of thousands. Of course, the idea is that any and all of them could be printed, if an occasion were to arise. But what would that special day be like?

Years pass, and it never comes. The prospect of printing them all out becomes unthinkable. The reason they never turn into objects is precisely because these photos have already served their purpose: At the party, which we wished would go on forever, we posed and we clicked. Then we showed each other the little LCD screen, and we were satisfied - the moment would last. (A little while later, we repeated the ritual.)”

We do share those images of course now – but we do so online rather than in print. The popularity of social networks has been driven largely by the proliferation of these images, and the ease of sharing them with online. Now we can share hundreds of images almost immediately, to hundreds everywhere. The image itself has become the primary focus for these networks.

Few could argue against this democratization of images, which has enabled us to capture and share more of our lives with more people. But a strange thing has happened beyond the loss of the printed photo, beyond just the nostalgia of losing objects that for oldies like me symbolize memories a very real and tangible way.

What has also changed is type of image, and therefore the very purpose for capturing the moment itself.

This change was highlighted on my company’s recent trip to Japan. We visited some amazing towns, temples and locations on our trip, and of course we all happily snapped away. But what was noticeable (especially in the images viewed later) was that for most people, the location was insignificant when compared to the drive to capture the right of image, of ourselves and our friends.

Such is the imperative to record ourselves these days, in the best possible way and up close, in the vanity mirror that is online social networking. The location is merely evidence to show we were there.

Of course we have always wanted to put ourselves at the front and centre of the landmark scenery, to prove we were there in the first place. Our photo albums are full of these shots. But you sense something has changed.

The place and event, the actual moment itself, is starting to become irrelevant now. We would rather spend time capturing 50 image of our selves at the place, than take a single image of the place itself. Of course technology enables us to do this. You see the results immediately, and there can always be another shot. It is now within our power to get a better image of ourselves, and if we take enough we might just get the image we want. The perfect memory.

But a memory of what? Because with this change, instead of reminding us of the memory, this image becomes the only memory.

The focus of photos, beyond the enthusiasts and professionals, is now becoming the means to experience now, well, later. And it is a moment in which the ‘now’ is really only just us. What we’re in danger of losing is both the experience of the actual moment, and the moment without us as the only focus.

Flicking through my old photo albums, that is one of the joys, surely. To see places and people beyond ourselves, even if we are also in it. To be reminded and nostalgic about time and places and memories perhaps long since dormant.

My fear is we lose a great big chunk of life and experience, and the ability to enjoy that later, when the camera’s eye is always trained back on us. Up close and personal. And always on.

My feeling is, thankfully, that we all want more than that. When we came back from Japan, and everyone compared photos, one person’s photos were the most sought after by the whole company. She was simply a camera enthusiast who had taken lots of photos of the different locations and local people.

You could sense palpable regret from everyone else that they had not spent more time capturing similar images. Because although we could copy those images to our files, we knew they would never be our memories.

We knew instinctively that somehow we had lost an opportunity we could never get back: to look beyond our own vanity mirrors and preserve something more important than ourselves.