Presence is the memory
I’ve had a smartphone for years. I do take photos. Just not of everything — and I don’t share them with everyone.
The problem isn’t photography. It’s what happens when documenting replaces paying attention. The moment a camera comes out, something shifts. We start framing instead of feeling, managing instead of being present. The camera doesn’t just record the moment; it changes it.
Some experiences imprint themselves precisely because they are fully lived. When we rely on photos to remember, we often remember less. Attention gets outsourced. Memory weakens. If the phone is doing the remembering for us, we don’t have to.
When my son and I talk about Paris, we don’t scroll through images. We describe it to each other. What we noticed. How it felt. What stayed. The memory lives in language, not pixels. It remains active, shared, alive.
What unsettles me isn’t the photo itself, but the need to show everything. Why does every moment require an audience? Why do we feel compelled to prove that we were somewhere, that something mattered? And why does the approval — the likes, the hearts — feel so good?
That rush is not harmless. It trains us to measure experience by reaction rather than meaning. Moments become performances. Memory becomes external, dependent on validation.
I take photos when something calls for it. I keep many of them private. Some I never looked at again. They exist as quiet markers, not content. And many moments are left unrecorded entirely — because they deserve full attention.
Not everything needs to be captured.
Not everything needs to be shared.
Some things are meant to be remembered by being lived.
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