An Observation of Photography
What makes photography meaningful? What makes a photo resonate with a person?
Photos are a key mechanism in the creation and maintenance of social relationships, as well as a medium for how people feel and remember their experiences. Today we spend so much time documenting life through a lens—everything is captured and frozen in a frame. From dinners with friends, late nights on the town, and lazy days inside, so much of our everyday lives and interactions are captured. They sit in our camera roll, get shared on Instagram and Snapchat and Facebook and X and Lapse and…
Modern technology has shifted photography in a major way. Taking photos is such a frequent and common part of our daily lives, for it's more available and trivial than ever before. Old barriers like technical knowledge, film development, or expensive equipment needed, no longer hinder almost anyone from being able to take a picture.
According to the Pew Research Center (2024), 97% of Americans own a cellphone with 9/10 owning a smartphone, up from just 35% in 2011. About 1.8 trillion photos are taken annually—that's 57,246 every second. A typical smartphone user stores about 3,000 photos in their camera roll. Nearly 54% of users find it overwhelming to search their camera rolls for specific pictures.
It's this phenomenon of frequent picture-taking that sparked my curiosity for embarking on this mental exercise of understanding how our relationship with photography has changed, and it goes back to the fall of 2018.
While living in Spain, I had the opportunity to travel and explore many sites and cities throughout Europe. From the beaches of Lisbon to the streets of Florence to the cliffs of Ireland. However, there was one experience that resonated with me more than others—and not for the sites or the culture, but rather because of an observation of human behavior and the question it would lead me to:
What is the connection between photography, meaning, and memory?
An Observation of Photography
On one of my travels, I had the chance to explore the city of Granada in southern Spain. Characteristic to many cities in the southern region, Granada's architecture and culture reflected the Reconquista and the religious tug-of-war between the Moors—Spanish Muslims—and Christians. The history of this conflict is most noticeably present in the region's art and architecture.
Conquering powers often chose to preserve, adapt, and utilize the structures and artistic influences of the different cultures to produce hybrid works. Christian craftsmen utilized Islamic influences and preexisting Ismalic design, which created a new style of art and architecture called Mudejar. The Alhambra, located in Granada, is one of the most prominent surviving examples of Mudejar architecture.
Customary to similar experiences, a tour of the Alhambra included walking through the palace and observing art and artifacts in addition to learning about the history of the region. My group of friends had the chance to take a tour during one of our days there. On this tour, we were mixed with other visitors, most noticeably two tourists, who from my deduction, were American.
As a museum lover and culture connoisseur, I enjoy observing the art and surroundings, reading the little plaques, and learning about their histories. Even for those less keen on the learning aspect of tours, the palace offered amazing views of the city below and a beautiful garden to walk through. There were ways for all visitors to interact with the grounds and indulge in the experience.
The two tourists, however, seemed to have a different objective. At each stop, they would take turns taking photos of each other in front of the different art pieces and scenic views, so much so, that they began to not only distract from my experience but the experience of the others who became observantly annoyed.
As I observed them I couldn't avoid this feeling of emptiness. I asked myself, how would they remember this moment? The architecture, the history, the significance. Would it all be overshadowed by their disposition to take pictures rather than be present in the moment? Would photos of the unique experience carry any meaning or only serve as a backdrop in a social media post?
It led me to the question of how the action of taking a photograph and the consequent photograph itself affect our relationship with experiences and our memories of them later on. It wouldn't be until years later that I would find the answer to my question in the works of one of my favorite academics, Daniel Kahneman.
The Science of Experiencing
To understand the dynamic of this particular connection between photography and psychology, we must first dive into the idea of thought systems proposed by Kahneman in his book Thinking Fast and Slow.
The thesis of Kahneman's (2011) work centers on the idea that humans have two systems of thought—a fast, intuitive system 1 and a slow, calculated, deep thinking system 2. System 1 deals with impressions, intuitions, and feelings. It operates automatically with little to no effort and as a result, is the system we spend the most time in. System 2 on the other hand centers on critical thinking, reflection, problem-solving, and analysis.
“Systems 1 and 2 are both active whenever we are awake. System 1 runs automatically and System 2 is normally in comfortable low-effort mode, in which only a fraction of its capacity is engaged. System 1 continuously generates suggestions for System 2: impressions, intuitions, intentions, and feelings. If endorsed by System 2, impressions and intuitions turn into beliefs, and impulses turn into voluntary actions. When all goes smoothly, which is most of the time, System 2 adopts the suggestions of System 1 with little or no modification. You generally believe your impressions and act on your desires, and that is fine — usually.
When System 1 runs into difficulty, it calls on System 2 to support more detailed and specific processing that may solve the problem of the moment. System 2 is mobilized when a question arises for which System 1 does not offer an answer… System 2 is activated when an event is detected that violates the model of the world that System 1 maintains" (24).
We are born to perceive the world around us—to identify objects, recognize patterns, focus attention, and avoid losses and fears amongst countless other things. Through practice and time, these mental activities become fast and automatic. We learn to use heuristics, stereotypes, and patterns to make judgments and decisions that save us the mental energy of deploying system 2. While it often leads to a plethora of common cognitive biases such as confirmation bias and the Halo Effect, it's often quite useful, especially regarding how we allocate our energy and attention.
The most relevant application of this dynamic to this exercise is how these systems affect our social experiences. How does operating in system 1 or system 2 affect the way we perceive and remember the world and our interactions with others?
Kahneman proposes that we have two selves: an experiencing self that aligns with System 1 and a remembering self that aligns with System 2. Our remembering self is the slow, calculated mode of thinking that focuses on curating the story surrounding the experience. It centers on how we will remember the experience and how others will perceive it. We focus more on all the details that create the moment rather than the moment itself.
Conversely, our experiencing self is the fast, intuitive, feeling mode of thinking that allows us to be present in moments and focus on the experience rather than its curation. It likens to flow. In this state of experiencing, we aren't so concerned about the perceptions and cues of the outside world and are allowed to immerse ourselves in the moment.
When we fully absorb into moments our perception of experience and time changes. It's not so much that it flies by, but rather it thickens and we become aware of its granularity. We become aware of every detail—like walking with our feet in the sand, we feel every grain of the moment. The tastes, the smells, the sounds, most importantly, our emotions.
This idea is best supported in the work of Moshe Bar. In his book Mindwandering, Bar explores how mechanisms like mental load, rumination, and other processes of concentrated thinking affect the quality of our experiences. While Bar doesn't directly refer to the work of Kahneman, his ideas outlined in the following two excerpts align with the industriousness and resource demand of Kahneman's system 2:
"A new experience requires new brain activity and the availability of cortical resources. the busier is our brain at a given moment, the less we have available to allocate for a new experience. The new experience has to "elbow" its way in, and if our mind is already occupied, the resources left will allow for only a partial and superficial experience, if at all. Less of the sensations, associations, and emotions will be evoked with an occupied mind; the color red will not be as bright, and the flower will not be as beautiful" (144).
"By now we realize there are multiple sources for diminishing the quality of our experience, all of which we need to fight for better experiences in our lives. First, the quality of our experiences is tainted and possibly tarnished because the doors of our perception are not cleansed: dispositions, biases, prejudice, convictions, and strong expectations all affect how we see the world. Second, the depth and richness of our lives are dramatically reduced by our tendency to occupy our mind and multitask, that false belief that we can do multiple things at once. Indeed, trying to do only one thing at a time is an excruciating exercise and the multiple demands on our mental capacities are not always a matter of voluntary and conscious choice. Third, and perhaps the most profound factor, is the lack of immersion. We can't always be watching and narrating our life; we need to be inside our life" (163).
Bar's work, when paired with Kahneman's, provides us with a framework for understanding how our mental orientation determines the quality of our experiences and how it affects our memories. When operating in system 2, we diminish our ability to fully perceive the present which in turn diminishes the richness of the memory associated with the experience. The application of these ideas as artists, more specifically photographers, is vital to the way we approach and execute our work and interactions with others.
The Link Between Science & Photography
The dynamic of self in experiences is an essential mechanism in creative work, especially in photography. It shapes a photo's meaning for the photographer, the subject, and the observer. It centers on the question:
Did the photograph capture the moment or did it curate it?
Another way to ask the question is if the photograph is a manifestation of our experiencing self or our remembering self—a product of system 1 or system 2. Kahneman touches on this idea in his work, writing:
The frenetic picture-taking of many tourists suggests that storing memories is often an important goal, which shapes both the plans for the vacation and the experience of it. The photographer does not view the scene as a moment to be savored but as a future memory to be designed. Pictures may be useful for the remembering self—though we rarely look at them for a very long time, or as often as we expected, or even at all—but picture taking is not necessarily the best way for the tourist’s experiencing self to enjoy a view (389).
Often, photography is a product of the remembering self. It becomes a medium for us to design future memories and curate stories. The action of taking a picture becomes motivated by questions like: How do we want to remember the moment? How will outsiders perceive the moment? How will they perceive me? How does this align with my brand and social presence? Is this photo technically proficient? Is it visually appealing? What abstract themes or story am I trying to communicate? For what audience am I capturing this?
Photography in this context becomes a medium for the careful curation of our identities, our digital presence, and our technical proficiency. The paradox is that when we activate system 2, we diminish our ability to connect and experience the moment. Thus, when we look back on photos created by our remembering selves, we find they often lack depth and meaning—void of emotion and connection—a product of unavailable cortical resources.
This isn’t quite the case when we use our cameras as our experiencing selves or capture others' experiencing selves. When we exist in moments as our experiencing selves something special happens—we create through feeling and connection. Thus, when we look back on photos created by and of our experiencing selves, we are empowered to return to those feelings and revel in the granularity of them. It allows us to connect without the interference of our remembering selves having corrupted the experience.
This presence and projection of the experiencing self is the key to determining the impact of what is captured. However, this idea of the experiencing self in photographs does not only apply to the subject and photographer but also for the audiences who view these photographs.
The Paradox of Curated Photos
Interestingly, and contrary to common perception, candid photos captured by and of our experiencing selves accomplish what many today seek to achieve through the creation and sharing of curated photos.
A 2018 investigation into the social benefits of candid photography by Jonah Berger and Alixandra Barasch highlighted this disconnect. Through five studies, they found that "while photo posters may like posed photos because it gives them the feeling of controlling the impression they are making, but that same control may make observers view them less favorably. (1015)"
The driving force behind this idea is that of genuineness. As observers, we prefer authenticity and the unpolished version of others' lives because it communicates a more accurate sense of another person's self and their experiences. It makes us feel as if somehow we know them better or are more connected to them. Indeed, the studies found that when presented with candid posters, people were interested in being friends or going on a date with them.
As photographers and subjects, we spend so much time as our remembering selves trying to curate moments, design future memories, and capture perfect depictions of our lives. However, such constant orientation to curation can disconnect us from our audiences. As a result, those identities we wish to project, the lifestyles we seek to share, and the relationships and experiences we seek to highlight, often fail to make the impact we desire.
Unfortunately, we don't always have the privilege of capturing perfectly uncurated moments. It's easy to do so as a casual photographer or in travel or street photography when all you have to do is capture life as it unfolds. As professional photographers and creators, we often create ideas and stories that have to be manufactured.
The challenge becomes, how do we counter the mechanisms of curation to draw out authenticity? How do we as photographers and social beings create and capture experiences that encourage connection and emotion when the medium doesn't naturally support such genuineness? It starts with how we approach our practice of photography and our interactions with others when we have the camera in our hands.
That's the focus of part two of this mental exercise.
Conclusion
So, what is the connection between photography, meaning, and memory?
The answer to this conundrum lies in the strange rapport between photography and our experiencing selves. When intertwined, they have a way of connecting us to the world, unlike any other medium of creation. It allows us to capture moments without distortion—to capture life exactly as it is down to the 1000th of a second. Uninterrupted, unaltered. It diminishes the interference of our remembering selves and connects us to the emotion of moments, thus empowering us to have richer, more meaningful memories.
However, we don't always have the privilege of capturing perfectly uncurated moments. The challenge for us as photographers, professional or not, is to try to counter the mechanisms of modern photography and capture life as authentically as we can. This calls for us to pause, put the camera down, and experience life without a lens first—it calls for us to connect as human beings.
For me and many others, that is exactly what creation and photography are about—capturing that human connection that we share with the world. The connection between friends, between those we love, between strangers, and the emotion that we share. Happiness, heartbreak, anger, peace, all of it.
I think at the core, photos intertwined with our experiencing selves remind us that for all the complexities of life, it's not money, or work, or likes on social media that ultimately determine the quality of our lives or how we will remember them, but our connection to the world around us. We come to cherish the people and places in our life journey for how they make us feel because, at the core of it all, we’re human.
I believe that is what photography, or at least meaningful photography, does well. It connects us to our humanity.
References
Bar, M. (2022). Mindwandering: How your constant mental drift can improve your mood and boost your creativity. Hachette Go.
Berger, Jonah. “A Candid Advantage? The Social Benefits of Candid Photos.” Social Psychological and Personality Science, vol. 9, no. 8, 2018, pp. 1010–1016, https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550617732390.
Kahneman, Daniel, 1934-2024, author. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
Mobile Fact Sheet. (2024, January 31). Pew Research Center; Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/mobile/
Woolf, M. (2023, November 20). 18+ Mobile Photography Statistics for 2024. photoAiD. https://photoaid.com/blog/mobile-photography-statistics/
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