Click on one of the numerous photos in your gallery and instantly, a burst of memory occurs in your mind, seemingly taking you back to the exact place and setting in which it occurred. Such is the power of our photos, but also that of imaginations in our minds.
Over the past few weeks, I have been reflecting deeper on the photos I take and why I do it. At its core is also a broader conversation about what’s real and what’s fake, especially in this age where artificial intelligence seems to be on the path towards an irreversible ascendancy.
It is without a doubt that the invention of cameras and the subsequent proliferation of photography and various forms such as photojournalism is a prime example of how technology has changed our relationship with our environment and even time. For the post war baby boomer generation, the rise of photography for personal use coincided with the rise of the consumer society after the second world war, especially in the west as private enterprises thrived and served as symbols of the west’s relative prosperity. But prior to this, photography was something more limited, either to the elite or for non-private purposes. We can look no further to the Spanish Civil War where pioneers such as Robert Capa and David Seymour injected new meaning into what it meant to capture a moment through the lenses of a camera. For them, it was a means of telling a story to create a message, a message that will hopefully resonate around the world, of the horrors of war, of the threat posed by despotic fascism, of the ordinary struggles of everyday people whose lives were undoubtedly upended by the war. Similarly, we look back and think about the trials and tribulations of the 1960s where the Vietnam War was fought and won back home in the court of public opinion, as the world’s first TV war. It was precisely photos, such as the one of a screaming, naked girl who was burnt in the aftermath of a US bombing which captured the attention and melted the hearts of audiences around the world. This was unlike any other moment in history. This was a time whereby a picture told a thousand words and more - it was able to evoke emotions and paint a picture that one would probably never have been able to imagine in an alternate world without photos or images.
Turning now to why I take my photos today, I can hardly claim to espouse such noble causes or to say that I have impacted as many people with my photos. If anything, I lament the rise of photography as a means for our personal self-gratification. Today, we turn the camera at ourselves, turning it from an instrument of defiance into a tool of deification. In this paradigm, we are the gods. Cameras serve our innate desires for self-gratification, from TV advertisements to the barrage of Instagram photos online. I believe that we are turning the camera in the wrong direction. The world is a much larger place and there is more to the universe than the rotation of the planets around the centrality of our orbits.
But neither does this statement make me an angel. My photo journey implicitly began with a quest to capture the beautiful. For me, this consisted more of nature - mountains, rivers, sunsets and occasionally, of cities and its architecture than of people and mini-moments. But then I wonder if this pursuit of the aesthetic is something worth celebrating. What counts as something beautiful? Can all forms of beauty be captured? What about its greater significance? And if we all embark on an arms race of what is beautiful from the outside, is this a superficial cause we ought to embrace as a prevailing social norm and narrative? In other words, is photography the essence of all that glitters is gold?
Interestingly, the way in which I perceive my photos and the reason why I take photos has slowly shifted. Photography preys on our desire to transcend time and break free from the tyranny of a moment, to be able to feel it, to live it once more, and be immortals that can dictate our own circumstances and not have it be constrained. This is the very essence of what photography means to me today - memories. There is something about the photos today that transcend its aesthetic appeal. Each photo might encompass a building or a plant. But they somehow evoke an emotion in me on how I felt about a moment, or even manage to invoke an imagination in my mind about the moment itself, helping me recall what happened and what it was worth remembering. Sometimes, looking back on a photo unlocks new memories that never occurred to me the last time I had seen the photo. There is something huge about this piece of technology and its ability to capture with impeccable precision, every single detail, down to the smallest pixel of a moment in time. Replicability of what we prize is indeed something infinitely precious and simbolise how technology can expand our options and increase our agency. Think about the potential of a photo to contain a deeper history or story. Think about the power of a photo in being able to show your children the exact same object as you witnessed with your own bare eyes many years ago. Personally, I believe in the power of nostalgia as that warm, fuzzy feeling within you. The reason why photos strike at the heart of the individual is because it caters to that gaping void in us. We fear losing a moment that is precious to us forever, lost to the very limits of the human mind and memory. We fear that time will leave us behind, confined to dust and inexistence, to not be remembered or acknowledged. And more often that note, photos teaches us to be grateful. We reexamine and realise the renewed importance of a moment, a thing, a person upon further reexamination. Through time, we can now see with hindsight the actual importance of a moment in the past and change the meaning attached to it. But still, photography is something intrinsically selfish for me. My desire to want to continue having a moment and saving it for myself is not noble but just a means of repairing a gaping hole that is common to us all.
But I also have one more fear. I fear that given the volume of photos that we are taking, we will slowly become desensitised to what’s inside a photo, by virtue of its sheer volume or amount. Today, the ease of taking a photo merely by whipping it out of your pocket and clicking a button in seconds has completely changed the paradigm. For our parents and grandparents, every shot was precious and something that cannot be missed. Storage of photos and limits to the number of photos were a thing in the past. But convenience and abundance is not good in and of itself. It is often perilous and makes us take something for granted. What I fear is that I am performative, that I merely took photos for the very sake of it, that these will then be looked up in my albums and confined to the abyss forever. And similarly, I fear the very desensitisation of society to the important themes that some photos may contain. Given the torrent of images on social media, on the news and everywhere all around us today, such as on billboards, I fear the normalisation of things like violence and suffering, or even the reinforcing of certain stereotypes and toxic stigmas. And what about those who think that their mere responsibility lies in capturing this moment. What does action mean in this case and does photos create a placebo effect that we have already done something and may not need to do more? Photos can help us relive a moment and seal its permanence within the pages of history. Yet, it can also guarantee its irrelevance should we choose to do so and without care or caution for what exactly does a photo mean.
That leads me to my final topic of discussion. What does photo mean in relation to art or as an act of creation? Is photography creating? More importantly, how will the meaning of photos change in the age of artificial intelligence? Can we even tell apart what is real from what is fake? If artificial intelligence will soon have the power to create far better photos in terms of quality and far supercede what we can even dream to capture in terms of quantity, then what future does photography hold in the future or will it be consigned into obsolescence and be permanently diminished in significance. Ironically, technology will not be our saviour or for the enhancement of photography this time. Progress will give way to an internal implosion caused by the torrent of AI slop online. This is one of my concerns.
And so technology can be a rather scary thing. We want to live in a world that is authentically ours. Yet, while a photo might be the same as the moment in terms of its appearance, is it really the same? What counts as being and existence? Moreover, I think about advances in virtual reality. If the photos and videos that technology reproduces a moment become so advanced that we can literally wear glasses to relive a moment while not actually being in that moment, what does this mean for our concept of reality? This is a terrifying prospect for me. Deep down, the line of thinking that says that to relook at a photo is to relive a moment also suggests that what one is going through is not real and a product of an imagination or some would say, a hallucination. Maybe it is indeed true that we can never transcend our status as slaves of time.
Scrolling through my gallery today, I cannot help but wonder at the power of a mere 1x1cm grid in altering our perceptions of reality and our relationship with the past and through time. If there is any reminder that these photos serve as today, it would be a warning about the need for us to not be slaves of our own technology and of the importance for us to actively think and reflect about what we do in the now, as something infinitely and intrinsically precious, yet something worth no more than a piece of toilet paper in the next moment.