In-disposable Memories

Disposable images.
Copies and copies and slight variations of a scene.  Posed and altered and photo-shopped, cropped and flipped until the image is morphed into the memory we wanted.  Many of these end up in a digital recycle bin or in the dark recesses of social networks.
The chance that was once involved in a photograph is gone.
That viewfinder was a window of possibility but elusive certainty.

Now, we strive for counterfeit perfection.
A veneer, a wallpaper, a coat of paint and the reality of what once was, is altered.

Oh, gone are the days of stepping into the light before taking a picture, the crooked shots, the red eye, the missing limbs but also that feeling of anticipation, excitement and finally accomplishment having taken a beautiful photograph.

A few weeks ago I met some friends on a night out.
They had come into possession of a good old fashioned camera.  It took black and white images on film.
It was such an oddity.  They had taken it to someone in the know and asked if the camera was still fully functional.  Having been reassured that it was, they took this piece of antique equipment out on the town to capture a moment in time.  A moment daubed in tones of black, grey and white, dull and clear at the same time.

The capacity of this little box of memories was 12 shots.
Twelve scenes immortalised in shades of black and white.
No dizzying mega-pixels or intense colour enhancers.
Only a window that offered a possible future snap of a soon to be past event.  No room to doctor or alter it, that jagged wheel winded tensing the hammer as it waited to fly, pounding out this dent in a string of events.

We took photographs and asked other punters to join our mission.
The heavy camera brought a smile to several faces as they reminisced about their youth, old cameras and film and family photos and developing rooms.  It was an art.  Now, the art is fabrication.


Countless photographs fly by our newsfeed, sometimes we afford a 'like' or 'share'.  But these images slip into obscurity, occasionally resurrected but ultimately they pale in comparison to the dusty excitement of pulling out a photo album, the tenderness of holding a picture in your hands and kissing the image of your sweetheart goodnight. There is an insurmountable distance between us and those images buzzing on our computer screens, they'll never be as intimate as those memories painstakingly developed and stored in bulky folders.  They'll never offer the same reassurance as an in-disposable memory captured on film.