Reviewing, editing, and hunting among a myriad of my old photographs is at once an exercise in patience (there’s so many!) and in vanity (some of them came out quite well!), and a swift jog to the memory—which, I imagine, is a large part of the reason why I take so many pictures in the first place. I don’t want to forget a single corner of the places I have loved.
A friend once half-jokingly accused me of paying more attention to the pictures I take than to my actual surroundings. On one hand, that’s not true at all. I do enjoy the actual traveling more than I enjoy taking pictures. I don’t see the world solely through a camera lens. And yet… it’s hard to stop seeing in angles and light and repeating or contrasting elements. Photography is an art, and I take as much pleasure in it as I do in my writing. And, of course, there’s the other half of the equation, the half that keeps me clicking the shutter even if the light is poor or the colors drab.
One look at those photos, and I am once again walking down a cobblestone street lined with jewel-toned tiles, once again breathing the tangy ocean air, once again smelling ripe oranges or hearing the trill of a goldfinch. The truth is, I hoard these photographs (I almost never delete even the muddled ones). I keep them as a backup, a trigger for my memory. I have spent significant time in nursing homes; I have seen firsthand memory ravaged by time. And I know a few photos could never stave off that kind of disaster, but I don’t want to fall prey even to a casual forgetting. I do not want to surrender my memories to the mist of time that devours so much of our lives. I have been wondrously happy here. Twenty years from now, I want to have something vivid to hold onto—not just the names of a few cities ticked off a list or a vague recollection of contentment. It’s the same with everywhere I go, every place I’ve called home. I want to be able to conjure the walls of my house, the needles of the pine trees surrounding the cabin, the color of the sky caught in the spray of a fountain… the people and places I may never see again, and that are therefore all the more precious.
I try not to see the world through my camera lens (though judging by the sheer quantity of photos I take, many of you may not believe me). But I am desperate to have it capture my world, because I am stubborn and greedy and refuse to let go completely and consign any one moment solely to the dim past. So when my camera comes out at a dinner or on a walk down Gran Vía or even for the snow-covered branches of a birch tree back home, please bear with me. It may be a futile pursuit to try and capture each fleeting moment, but it soothes my heart nonetheless. And who knows—some of those pictures might just turn out to be beautiful, too.
I now return you to your regular programming.
