| Four hundred photos into a European holiday, and my camera was gone. I can’t recall how many cities I had been to or how many people I had met, but I’m sure about the number of photos. A full memory card of unprinted pictures, and no way of getting them back. Without the camera, I actually started questioning the value of the trip.
Judging from the underpowered flashes and artificial shutter-clicks that cloud around any given landmark in western Europe, I’m not the only traveller to define my trip by the number of snapshots collected. Digital photography turns us into documentarians, providing proof of places and moments from our marginally unique perspectives. Over the next few days, though, a niggling irony became increasingly apparent. Like many backpackers, I had chosen to avoid the packaged tours and upscale hotels, believing that unguided exploration was somehow more authentic. I felt fully justified in sniggering at overpriced souvenirs, yet I was spending most of my time worrying about missed photo opportunities.
As the weeks went by, my photographic reflexes started to fade. By the time I reached the Parthenon, my hand was no longer twitching at the hip where my camera was previously holstered. I was still instinctively dividing the ruins into 4x6 sections, but I could at least acknowledge that I didn’t need to capture them to appreciate them. It took a while, but even that artificial framing would eventually disappear. It became a relief. I hadn’t realized it, but having a camera had added an extra level of worry to travelling. With the difficulty of scraping together the time and money to embark on a decent trip, I’d already had a sense that time spent in anything other than a state of bliss would be time wasted. By adding in a need to capture every one of those precious moments on film, things were getting overwhelming.
That could be why so many holiday snaps have a desperate happiness to them. Artificially cheery photos have been around since the first sweat-soaked and dehydrated family to force a smile at the edge of the Grand Canyon, but at least in those days film was a more precious commodity. Even five years ago, most travellers were still using film, and a single 24 exposure roll a day was considered excessive. These days, 24 exposures is hardly enough to cover a round of drinks at the local pub. A moderate investment can get you upwards of 1000 photos on a single memory card, which translates into an absurdly unrealistic number of Kodak moments per day. That means more time posing in front of the ruins of Pompeii and less time looking at them.
I was comfortable with that, though, because the pictures were a way to postpone experiencing anything until I was back home, away from bustling crowds and other distractions. By taking photos without really looking at anything, I’d shifted the focus of the camera from capturing memories to creating them. Eventually I realized I’d been writing an elaborate illustrated fiction of the trip I thought I’d want to look back on.
After having been so wrapped up in the idea that I’d lost 400 memories, it’s a little amusing that none of my favourite moments were in those pictures anyway.
In Pompeii, I’d watched a group of nuns hop a fence to cut through an off-limits area of the park, but hadn’t thought to photograph their flagrant rule-breaking. In Rome, our bus driver had cranked Iron Maiden on the way to the Vatican, drumming on the steering wheel the whole way, but a grainy digital video wouldn’t have done that any justice. And moments from later in the trip, like the sheer glee in realizing I was walking barefoot in the rain in Warsaw with two perfect strangers, would have been ruined if I’d paused to take a picture.
Of course, there were still times when I wished I had a camera handy. There are faces that are bound to fade away, and snapshots can jog the most obscure memories to the forefront. But it’s worthwhile to avoid the digital viewfinder, even for just a day or two out of a weeklong trip. I’ve already spent more than enough time looking at screens. |
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