Photographs capture your memories. They’re how you share
moments with people who weren’t in them. They give you something to keep.
But as I think of my favourite photos, I realise this isn’t
quite true. There’s that photo of my mum as a child buried in the sand, the one
of me as a toddler in the sink, the one of my great grandparents outside their
house… They’re a way of sharing, but those will never be memories for me. Only
images and whatever imagination has added. Whatever they meant at the time is
lost on me now.
As for the places I’ve been…I like the photos of me with the
people I’ve met. But the photos of the landmarks can be found online. And the
photos of my discoveries miss the act of discovery.
You can’t photograph smell or taste. You can’t photograph
the way your legs feel after running up steps and you can’t photograph that
feeling inside when a view opens up that you weren’t expecting.
I’m thinking of Prague. The steps I’m thinking of lead up to
the gothic cathedral. When I reached the top, the city opened up beneath me.
One of the reasons I remember this moment so well is because I remember
thinking: If only I had a camera.
The truth is, I don’t remember exactly what I saw, even
though I remember looking for a long time, trying to absorb every detail. What
I do remember though, is being glad that
I was there.
If I had a photo, I wouldn’t have had that moment. I
wouldn’t have thought so much about all that I was getting from that moment
that a camera couldn’t. I wouldn’t have enjoyed it so much at the time.
When I have a camera, I often notice
something, take a picture and move on. Without my camera, I was under no
illusion that I could keep those places.
The funny thing is, I remember that trip so much more
visually than any other, because I was so aware of each sight I couldn't capture. I remember how the life ring with the ropes perfectly
framed that museum in Berlin. I remember the blue and pink pipes that looked
like they were from a Roald Dahl story. I remember Dresden at night and the
lampposts that looked like they were made from icicles. I remember the graffiti
on the wall outside the hostel in Prague – the Mobius loop of trucks and tanks
that spoke of the city’s continuous cycle through destruction and rebirth.
I remember the mirror at the bottom of the stairs in the
Kafka museum that makes you feel like you’re falling upwards.
This is where I stop and see that by remembering, rather
than looking, I have to access these images through the chain of memories
surrounding them. That mirror in the Kafka museum wouldn't have been half as
unnerving if the city outside had been bathed in sunshine.
Instead I’d spent the whole day walking through pouring rain
with a heavy bag, no umbrella, nowhere to stay, and not a penny of the national
currency. In this state, the strange architecture looked like it was clawing
the sky and at last the twisted workings of Kafka’s stories made sense.
Other moments, like sitting on plastic chairs on an ugly
concrete balcony outside a large hostel in Berlin, would never have made a
photo at all. And yet drinking cheap red wine with Israelis and a German as he
decided to raise the somewhat sensitive issue of genocide, was so much more
memorable than sections of the Berlin wall arranged like postcards near Checkpoint Charlie.
So will I go without a camera again? Maybe in a year or two
as my memories fade I’ll change my mind, but for now, no regrets. A diary is
far more important.
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