... blog post:
This past year was one for retrospection, for looking back and remembering past times. Visions of how we once lived, the way we were.
The problem is our memories are selective. Our minds are discriminatory about what we remember and what we choose to forget.
What was it really like back then? Do we really remember? Are the memories even real or false ones diluted, scrambled or re-written over time or indeed inherited from someone else?
Our photographs can really help stimulate our memories, including long forgotten events, people, places and feelings. But even then what was it truly like so long ago, do we actually remember. It's all subjective anyway.
As a snapshot of a moment frozen in time, our own photographs are existential artefacts in that they affirm or imply the existence of something and that something, when you distill it right down to its essence, is ourselves just then.
Sometimes, when friends gather and share old photos the question may arise, "If you could, would you go back and live in this or that time again before this or that happened?" In the discussion maybe some will say yes and some no. But that is the power of photographs even though they neither lie nor tell the truth, they can have the ability to trigger memories flawed those these may be. Of course the only real truth is that no-one can go back in time no matter how alluring the photos may make it seem.
As for me? Well I am simply going to make more photographs for me to look back on at some future point and say to loved ones, "Do you remember how things were back then during the pandemic? Nice pictures but strange times, wouldn't want to live through that again!".