On photography and memory

What does the light preserve and what does it destroy?

Dear Friends,

Thank you for welcoming these words into your inbox once again. In the quiet space between writer and reader, I'm grateful for the chance to share another reflection with you. In these busy times, I feel that is a gift to to be able to contemplate life's smaller moments.

Today's reflection explores the relationship between photographs and memory, how images both capture and transform our understanding of the past. I hope these thoughts find resonance in your own experiences with frozen moments and fading recollections.

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We were in Paris in spring, when the city softens and the Seine reflects a gentler sky. The days had filled themselves with meandering walks and busy museums, until one afternoon led us to a boat waiting at the Pont Neuf. To anyone who finds themselves in Paris, I have to recommend watching the city unfold from its river, where centuries of bridges cast their shadows on the water and buildings lean in to see their reflections. Paris reveals herself differently from the Seine, offering secrets that streets keep hidden.

That afternoon, I tried to capture every moment through my lens– the way sunlight peers through dark clouds, how pigeons balanced on century-old stone, the precise angle of Gothic spires. Back at our hotel, in that peculiar modern tragedy, I somehow erased every image instead of saving them! After the sharp words of panic subsided, I made a resolution. We would retrace our steps the next day, recreate every photo lost to digital oblivion.

But you cannot step into the same river twice, as the philosophers say. The second cruise felt like chasing ghosts– each shot an attempt to recapture something that had already slipped away. The wonder of discovery had been replaced by the mechanical act of documentation.

Why did we feel such desperation to remake these images when our memories had already preserved the essential truth of them- the rain-dotted windows, the way bridges wrote their arabesques against the sky, the sound of the boat passing through the water that no camera could have caught anyway?

We've become a species of archivists, each of us carrying in our pockets the power to freeze time. In Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman observes that "Tourism is about helping people construct stories and collect memories... the photographer does not view the scene as a moment to be savored but as a future memory to be designed."

I see this everywhere now— at the spectacular Harem of Topkapi Palace, where a woman pirouettes with her selfie stick, experiencing one of the world's great treasures only through her phone's screen. In Singapore's Joo Chiat, where a fashionable woman practices her smile between frowns, commanding her friend, "No. Not right. Let's do this again." During Washington's Cherry Blossom Festival, where people rush madly to capture the fleeting pink blossoms, sometimes literally breaking the very branches of the cherry trees they've come to preserve.

We are witnessing the strange death of authentic travel, sacrificed at the altar of the perfect post. In Santorini, tourists rent whitewashed rooms for an hour, just long enough to change outfits multiple times and craft the illusion of an extended stay. Their cameras capture the same view from the same infinity pool that millions have photographed before, each seeking to recreate an image they've already seen rather than discover one of their own.

Venice, Barcelona, and Amsterdam now struggle against the tide of visitors who arrive with shot lists instead of curiosity, each seeking their own version of someone else's perfect moment.

Every January brings fresh lists of must-visit destinations, and like a swarm of digital locusts, we descend upon these places, each of us determined to capture the same sunset, the same street corner, the same candid pose against ancient stones. We are loving these places to death, turning living cities into backdrops, reducing centuries of culture and daily life into a series of preset photo opportunities.

I nod disapprovingly at all this, even as my own phone fills with thousands of unconsidered images.

If I took a photo each waking minute, I would need another lifetime just to witness what I've captured in this one. We're guilty of this modern compulsion to preserve rather than perceive.

Kahneman presents a thought experiment: How would we plan our travels if we knew every photograph and memory would vanish afterward? The very idea feels apocalyptic, yet strangely liberating. Without the pressure to prove our experiences to the scrolling masses, would we choose different destinations? Would we finally learn to inhabit our moments rather than curate them?

After Sir Edmund Hillary reached Everest's summit, he didn't ask Tenzing Norgay to take his picture. Shockingly, there's no photo of him at the highest point on Earth, and he didn't think there needed to be. Somehow, this absence speaks louder than any image could.

Yet photographs, when they survive, still do carry their own magic. Deep in an ancestral home sits a storage trunk containing an album bound in thick cloth that still smells of naphthalene. Inside, black and white photos rest in triangular corners on heavy black pages that crackle when turned.

These albums were common in my childhood, their viewing a kind of ceremony. Here are aunts and uncles posed in studios before I existed, wearing expressions that echo down generations. Here is a photo of my father as a toddler, which I mistook for myself– a moment of vertigo where time folds in on itself, showing how we carry our ancestors in our faces.

I find myself returning to forgotten photos sometimes, the ones deemed imperfect for sharing– wrong light, awkward expressions, blurred edges. In their flaws, they capture the sign in the background that places us precisely in time, the stranger's laugh that accidentally became part of the story, the way the light fell just so, even if we didn't know to notice it then.

Perhaps, returning is not the right word. Is it possible to truly return anywhere?

Probably not. But in captured moments, both perfect and imperfect, we find traces of who we were when we pressed the shutter. We see our younger selves with untinted hair and eyes that sparkled with mischief, unknowing of the paths ahead. We glimpse the people we loved, still present in their particular way of tilting their heads or clasping their hands. These images become not just records of places, but maps of who we were when we stood there, what we thought worth preserving, what we hoped to remember.

Maybe the truth lies somewhere between the audacity Hillary embodied and our minor wish to hold onto every passing moment. Maybe there is a compromise in which we can learn to be both present and preserving, to know when to lift the camera and when to let the moment simply wash over us, letting go to become a part of the background rather than the centered character in the foreground.

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Until next time, I leave you with this. What photographs do you return to, again and again? Perhaps there's a story there, waiting to be told.

With gratitude for your attention and companionship,

Anirban