I once snapped a photo of a dumpling so perfect, I never dared to look at it again.
I told myself it was to remember it—but maybe it was just to make space in my brain.
Photography is often framed as preservation— capturing moments before they vanish. But does pressing the "capture button" replace the memory instead of reinforcing it? Think of how many photos sit buried in phones or hard drives, unseen. I have so much photos of daily meals, flowers, scenery, and some selfies (because I want to "preserve the moment"). These photos are less worthy to be called photography, so like, they are snapshots of my life, my emotions at one fleeting moment... I take them because I know I will forget about it, but for some reason, I don't want to. I also know I have a lot of older photos of my younger self, stored in stacks of portfolios, all in a dusty closet. When I look back to these photos in the future, I wonder what I will think: will I try to recall a specific thing/emotion from my memory, or will I just see it as a random "meaningless snapshot" from that time?
My bunch of photos become "bookmarks" of my life. It doesn't tell the story between the lines. I look at my photos taken in 2022, wondering what my purpose of taking the photos was. I can still remember the general event I attended without looking at the photos. The photos themselves— I don't consider them as photography either. So why do I still keep the photos? What am I trying to remember, by looking at them?
I think I might have just thought "a thing" simply looked "cool". But then, they weren't that cool. And I still don't want to delete these photos.
I've come to the conclusion that we photograph because we want to let go. It's too much to think that we're living in an "one and only" moment, never being able to return to that moment again. Hence, we take a bunch of photos, to simply let go— letting go of the "guilty feeling" of not enjoying a certain event, letting go of the fear of feeling future emotions of nostalgia.
I can relate to this conclusion I've came to a bit, even before I had a phone camera to take photos with. When I was really young, like 8 years old, I would tell my brain to "remember this exact moment"— it didn't matter if I was on a vacation in the mountains of China or if I was studying in my basement on a warm Summer day. I guess now, this habit just turned to snapping photos.
I think the most sacred moments of our lives often go undocumented. Maybe some memories want to be lived, not stored. Sometimes, our camera is there— but we don't reach for it. Not because we forgot about it, but because a feeling within us told us to not reach for it. Maybe it was the last time I saw someone, and the heaviness of that moment asked me to be present, not possess it. Maybe it was my grandparents holding hands when they thought no one was noticing. Maybe it was an old song I didn't know the name of playing in the car, and the time passed too short for me to record it. Maybe it was the way sunlight hit something perfectly for a moment, and I didn't want to miss it by fumbling with my phone. Maybe it was a moment that belonged only to me, not for my camera to store, not for my brain to hoard.