In The NY Times story “Shutterbug Parents and Overexposed Lives,” Margaret Riegel complains about the firehose of visual imagery from which children these days drink. Do photographs BECOME their memories, overriding any real brain imagery surrounding a particular event?
Is that bad?
We’re compelled to plant our phones in front of our faces, to snap images of everything from our most recent lunches to our latest fashion choices to our vacation minutiae.
When we take things in through a screen,
how much do we really remember?
Riegel’s article is a compelling argument for experiencing moments. For being present without electronic devices. For letting our senses design the architecture to Make a Memory.
Enjoy her NY Times story HERE.
Do you think pictures help you recall life events?
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Memories are bits of you. Leave something for the people who love you. Join the Make a Memory Movement HERE.
8 Comments
I think photos are important and enhance memories. They can remind you of events you might have forgotten. But, these days, I guess I’m old school. When does what you had for lunch become an event? What is a selfie, really? Yeah, it’s fun and that’s good. But there is something I don’t really get about the whole deluge. It’s because we can. It is what it is, but it’s not really on my radar.
Great question…while I think a picture may jog a memory, just as a smell brings a memory to the forefront – or a touch may bring a memory forward, I do not think the picture is the memory…but if you’re too busy taking pictures and not being in the moment…then yes, a picture can alter the memory – or you may not remember the “memory”.
yes, i think they absolutely do.
I think that photos may help you to remember that you did something, but they also distort your memory of things. If what you remember is taking the photo, then you’ve missed the experience and subsequent memory of the experience. Instead, what you have is a moment saved in time without any context. And that doesn’t seem worth the bother of snapping a pic.
love pictures and yes memories are captured. All you have to do is go through a box of old photos taken decades ago to see how many memories are captured.
I love looking at old family photos. Sometimes a photo is all someone has of beloved relatives who have passed on. At many of those events, only a few photos were taken. I usually don’t think of the photo per se but of what happened and why the photo was taken. A few months ago, I looked at a photo of my family during a visit from my brother. He had moved out of state and returned home for the first time for a visit. I remember how much we all missed him and of how he had changed.
I have thought about this quite a bit lately. Photos of events are very important to me and I do enjoy keeping a record. The conversations that often center around a shared event photo can be delightful. But I don’t often refer to photos of people who have meant a lot to me. Frankly, I don’t need the photos to resurrect the emotional ties and the stories that hold fast to my memories. I am glad we have family photos to be a record for subsequent generations, but I have memories that are stronger than any photo.
Maybe I just tell myself this because I’m also the family photographer and unless someone decides to Photoshop me right in, I’m not likely to be remembered through photography!
Hmm, I’m not sure that pictures necessarily help us preserve memories. I can recall exact sights and smells and conversations from memorable trips that happened 10 years ago. I took pictures, but they were developed and printed and inserted into an album. I may have looked at them 5 times in total since then. Yet the memories are so alive in my head.
More recent experiences have been photo-documented at a rate of 10X, I think – yet the memories are no more vivid.
Sometimes I wonder who we do all that snapping and sharing for? Ourselves, or others?
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