Is it time to give yourself a photo detox?

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/01/photo-detox-trillion-times

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Humanity is better equipped to record itself than ever before. In 2014 more photographs will be taken than at any time in history: shutters are expected to open and close 1tn times this year.

This is the genie Louis Daguerre let out of the bottle 175 years ago this month. For the first time, it seemed, the action of the human eye could be reproduced and fixed. But while the resulting Daguerrotype gave the strong impression of representing scenes "as the eye would see them", in reality it did neither that, nor did it match the way memories are stored. It was a clever illusion.

But it's one we've fallen for. We take photographs for lots of reasons, but the thrust is to preserve things. To create a memory similar to but more reliable than any network of neurons can manage. Concern greeted the news last month that taking photographs rather than immersing oneself in an experience can impair the formation of memories. People asked to look at paintings in a gallery were able to remember less about them if they were made to photograph each one.

It's a feeling many of us can relate to – on holiday, or at a special event, keeping a photographer's eye out, some part of our brain preoccupied with what might make the best shot. Now that cameras are always in our pockets, the study takes on a heightened significance: are we making amnesiacs of ourselves? Relying so much on memory sticks that it erodes our ability to experience everyday life and lay down real memories? Visiting Catania in Italy last month, I happened to be standing at the window of my hotel room when, in the middle distance, Etna began to erupt. I saw the first ash enter the air like a drop of dye in water, shooting forward then folding in on itself, expanding, losing definition, before being recharged with another burst. I'd never seen a volcano erupt, but my first thought was: "Where's my phone?"

So should we start 2014 with a photo-fast? Perhaps. As others have pointed out, the gallery experiment isn't unambiguously anti-camera. People who had been asked specifically to zoom in on parts of paintings remembered just as well as their naked-eye counterparts. And I now find myself using cameras more as a means of communication than as a way of recording things: I share photos with friends to tell them what I am doing and where I have been.

But there may be other reasons to challenge our obsession with photography. Using images to augment or replace our powers of recall isn't enough. Natural memories span the senses. They seem to live on particularly well in sound and in smell (there's no more powerful way to bring back the sense of being in a given time, place and mood, in my opinion, despite the fact that the human sense of smell is much worse than in most mammals. Dog nostalgia must be quite something). Last year saw the tongue-in-cheek promotion of a gadget called the Madeleine, an "analogue odour camera", which sucks smells from an object placed beneath a glass dome and captures the molecular data in a resin, from where it is sent to a lab to be turned into a fragrance.

But supposing the Madeleine became as good at capturing smell as cameras are at recording light? I expect we would sniff and sniff again until what were once powerful memories became merely placeholders, the sign that a memory once existed here but nothing more. This is the real problem with photography. Our compulsive recording of the world around us is an attempt to make memory something that it can never be: snared, stowed away, able to be relived in high fidelity whenever we choose.

Previous generations seem to have been more aware of the sense of false security that images can provide – portrait paintings were often accompanied by a memento mori – often a well-placed skull signified that death was inescapable. The selfie lacks this handy feature. As we happily snap away, are we are engaged in a kind of mass denial? Things can be preserved, we seem to be saying, perfectly, digitally, and for ever.

So perhaps I will have a photo-detox after all. Not because my memory will be the sharper for it, but because it will remind me that photographs are not the same as reality. Daguerre's invention was a magic trick, and one that continues to fool – 3bn times a day.

<em>Twitter: </em><em>@D_Shariatmadari</em>

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