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Even today, we still need photographs and here’s why

0 Liked Posted on: 17th February 2022

Did you know that photography is a relatively new invention? It was first invented in 1826 and grew more prevalent in the years to come. Before photography, the rich in olden England would hire artists to paint family portraits. 

  

  

In ancient Egypt, they created sculptures and paintings to record historical moments and to revere the monarchs. 

  

Ever since the invention of cameras and photography, the process of recording an image on film or digital electronic, we are able to swiftly capture these memories unlike our ancestors. Furthermore, due to its affordability and ease of use, people of most walks of life are able to use it. Today, we still use it actively, and more than ever before. 

  

However, what is the reason for this attachment to bygone memories that leads us to capture images? Here are some reasons why there is a need for photographs in our lives. 

  

1. Our memory is flawed

  

“Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.”

- Marcel Proust

 

Recall your very first memory as a person. It’s a bit fuzzy and unclear now, isn’t it? Despite how hard we try, sometimes our memory fails us. Our brain is susceptible to losing details of the memory and, other times, even reconstructs it. This is what the above quote means.

  

never let me go

  

Film or literature enthusiasts might know of one of Kazuo Ishiguro’s more known work, Never Let Me Go, a melancholic and poignant film that talks about the consequences of human cloning. It features loss and the significance of memory.

  

“Memories, even your most precious ones, fade surprisingly quickly. But I don't go along with that. The memories I value most, I don't ever see them fading.”

- Kathy of Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. 

  

The quote above comes from the main character’s, Kathy, belief that she’ll never forget these precious memories despite the common understanding that memory never really stays. 

  

Despite how much we want to keep the memory and hold it close to us, it does sometimes escape us.

   

Photographs can help us keep our memory to the truest it is. When our brain isn’t able to keep up anymore, at least these objective pieces of truth will help with the remembering process.

  

2. Helps us to pass on the memory to the next

    

film rolls

    

From history lessons, we are always taught the importance of remembering the past so that we learn from its bad and good. Photography is one of the mediums used to archive the past from the last century onwards. It helps us to remember our history and communicate to the next generation our past and stories.

    

On a more personal level, it gives us a piece of our older loved ones to hold close to. 

     

Elizabeth Edwards, an anthropologist, calls photographs ‘‘a form of interlocutors’’.¹ She shares that photographs are a bridge for the past to the present. It transfers whatever memories of the yesteryears to today. In this way, it helps us to reconnect with our ancestors.

   

3. Personal identity

   

polaroid selfie

    

Remember the times you flipped through your old yearbooks and thought to yourself how much you’ve changed? When we reconnect with photos of ourselves from the past, we see how we behaved and interacted with others. These instances remind us of pieces of ourselves that have almost faded away, but also remember the journey we’ve taken to reach today. 

  

4. A gesture of affection

  

reminiscing

  

Each act of photographing a moment in life, is filled with a particular purpose and emotion. For instance, that photo your parents took of you playing with your sibling two decades ago is fuelled by adoration for their children, and of course, parental love. No matter how simple, every photo we come across has a story and reason. 

  

“I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don't have complete emotions about the present, only about the past.”

- Virginia Woolf

  

We don’t fully process these photos when we first come across them. However, we only later realise how much they mean to us. It’s the magic of photography, that it’s able to to perfectly encapsulate the emotions from that bubble of time.

   

5. Also, a gesture of grief

   

By extension, because these are little time capsules, they hold a piece of grief for what has been lost. With time, there are always parts of our lives that we lose or are no longer the same. These photographs can aid this process of grief, a continuous journey that will never escape us, regardless of which aspect of our life. 

  

photo album reminiscing

   

Quoting from an article by Mette Sandbye, a mother had painstakingly compiled a photo album of her children’s years from infancy to adulthood.² When they have grown big enough and are ready to start a new life for themselves, the mother passes the photo album to her respective children. An act of love, as well as grief, as she bids these years goodbye.

   

Conclusion

   

We are constantly making memories. There isn’t a correct way to remember your life or your loved ones’ life. Photography is simply one of the innovations, among many others, used to immortalise our memories. However, photography is certainly an invention of the 19th century that has made the process of remembering more vivid and real. 

     

If you are looking for places to store these memories, FotoHub offers these services. You can print them on a mug, or collate them in a photobook or as photo prints. If not, you can even check out our catalogue in our eShop here. Make your memories through FotoHub!

   

¹‘Photographs and the Sound of History’' by Elizabeth Edwards in the 2005 Visual Anthropology Review
²''Looking at the family photo album: a resumed theoretical discussion of why and how' by Mette Sandbye in the 2014 Journal of Aesthetics & Culture
Tag: Photography
Posted in: Lifestyle, Ideas

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