A Unique Moment

508

These days, people like to document the lives they live. We take photos, videos, always running around with our smartphones. The omnipresent pursuit of capturing the moment. A pursuit to not forget about the past, kind of. But is it, really?

I know I'm weird in many different ways, but I just don't like to take photos while living through something. Sure, I'm a photographer (finished photography school), but I don't like taking photos at events. Birthdays, parties, trips, whatever. I'm rarely the documenter. When I'm in something, experiencing every part of it, I don't want to get out of it through taking photos.

There's something magical in experiencing major events directly. Photos can't present that. They can only convey the looks. Not the emotions, the words, the smells, even. They're a two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional world. They lack depth, trueness.

I seem to notice that quite a few of us have started living through photos. We just spend time scrolling through all the great moments we've had this summer, worrying when we're gonna go somewhere again. This creates a warped reality, where we only see the good things. The posed things. The things we had time to take a photo of.

I'm not saying: don't take any photos, ever. I'm saying: think about what you capture, and don't let them warp your memory.