the question of photos

Dean village, Edinburgh.

It’s not far off something you’d see in a children’s storybook specifically written by Hans Christian Anderson. Or the Brothers Grimm.

The almost Germanic place retains a quaint charm, lined in cobblestone streets that decorate the main attraction, the Water of Leith - an urban oasis that invites ducks and their offspring to bathe in the sunlit stream, as the glistening ripples travel up and outwards of the city centre.

Like all scenic locations nowadays, the village falls victim to the inevitable fate of gentrification. Former mill buildings, now converted 3-bed, 2-bath duplexes. And of course, tourists. Heaps of them. Most of whom probably saw an influencer’s video called “A Hidden Gem I Discovered in Edinburgh”, despite the village’s well-known status as a “successful grain milling area for more than 800 years” (according to Wikipedia).

Around the corner, attempting to cash-in on this scene, stands an artisan coffee cart, trying to sell instant coffee for £4.25 a cup, which no-one wants to buy. The vendor must’ve forgotten that only Starbucks generally appeals to American audiences.

I am no better than anyone else. I didn’t know this place even existed until an hour before I came. And I only really came because a friend of mine recommended it as the perfect location to fight off a quarter life crisis, which definitely sold it to me.

So I did as I always do.

I put in my headphones and I walked to a pretty place in the hopes that if I stayed there long enough, I would begin to experience an awe-inspiring moment and everything that has gone wrong in my life would start to make sense.

As I’m romanticising my life, perched on the stone bridge that goes over the creek, a Spanish family with a screaming child decide to sit themselves on the bench behind me and ruin my moment.

Good God, I think to myself, the audacity of some people…

I refocus my attention outwards to the scenic view. I find myself (phone in hand) slowly raising my arms to take a photo of what I’m seeing, which draws my eyes to everyone else around me. Also doing what I’m doing.

Down by the water, a girl is crouching down, trying to capture a aesthetic photo of a flock of ducklings on her iPhone. She doesn’t move for a solid six minutes (I counted), her thumb tapping the screen continuously as she takes numerous photos that probably all look identical to each other.

Now, this is not a criticism of the duck girl. We’ve all been there. Taking a hundred photos of whatever just to find the perfect one. It did get me thinking, though: why do we take photos? What is the over-arching purpose that drives us to innately whip out our phones to take a picture of things we find both interesting and uninteresting?

Because surely, as cute as this photo may be, duck girl must’ve seen a duck before. And suppose she posts this picture on her social media - I will assume her followers have too seen a duck before. Or they could google it.

So what makes her photo so special?

As I’m entertaining myself thinking about the philosophical intentions of duck girl’s activities, my eyes divert to two new characters.

A pair of ladies wearing hijabs are stood five metres down under the cobblestone bridge. The similar proportions of their eye-nose gaps tells me that they’re probably sisters. And their amazed faces behind their phone screens tells me that they’re most definitely tourists, and probably haven’t experienced anything as exotic as a Scottish natural waterway before.

They’re both holding out their phones at the exact same length, capturing the exact same picture.

There is nothing abnormal about this scene. But it’s only in reflection you can start to see the absurdity that when placed in locations of real beauty, we too often cover up our presence in the guise of a phone camera. It’s almost as if it’s too good to be true. That we need to prove our own presence to everyone but ourselves.

I immediately assume that both of these girls 1) will post this photo on their respective social medias, and 2) most definitely share the same social circle who will bare witness to their content. Many would argue that social media (mainly photo-centred ones such as Instagram) has the sole purpose of enabling comparison. And we live for comparison. To see whether or not we should be levelling up to or beyond our peers, collecting points like characters in a video game. But often collective adventures become collective content: identical photos, posted one after the other, by multiple different people. And we lose all sense of individualism in photos that are meant to represent unique experiences.

This thought is under the assumption that we solely take photos to post on social media, but this logic still applies to the photos that are left to rust in our backed-up camera roll. Because they’re there if we need them. To bring them out in times of desperate small talk. “You’ll never guess what I saw the other day…”

But seriously, how often have you taken a video at a concert and convinced yourself that you’ll do something with it? Before you know it, you have 25 different videos or photos filmed in sequence that reside in your camera roll - the graveyard of presence. You never do anything with these videos (despite justification in the moment) and you begin to wonder whether you could’ve spent that time really taking in that experience, instead of holding up your aching arm phone-in-hand, trying to prove your attendance to…no one.

This example could help explain two things on the human problem of obsessive photo-taking. That, suppose you did want to post one of these photos on your Instagram, having multiple nearly identical options allows us to curate the perfect expression. The one which we want the world to see. All details accounted for. Or, if we don’t post these photos, it demonstrates how it’s become second-nature to hide ourselves from the present in order to feel like we were really there. With tangible proof.

I think the answer lies somewhere in self-identity. The things we see, the places we go, they become part of who we are, and by taking photos, it’s a reminder that we retain control over how we present ourselves to the world, and in return, what it thinks of us.

I also think as humans, we care a lot about how much others value us, whether we’re willing to admit it or not. Taking photos is not just about the photo itself – it’s about the social capital that the photo carries.

I went to Dean Village. Therefore I am special. And, I can prove it. I took a photo.

That sounds incredibly cynical, and no, I do not truly believe that I am special because I visited one scenic, tourist location. After all, there’s plenty of places around the world, and in Edinburgh alone, that this could apply to. And I am one of millions of people to step forth in this village. But I do believe that there remains truth in humans using experiences (and therefore photos as evidence of those lived experience) as a measure of value.

It does make sense if you think about it. I would much rather have a conversation with someone who has travelled the entire globe than someone who has never ventured further than their back garden (although this would make for an interesting analysis on the life of a recluse.)

I am suspicious of people who claim to take photos for “the memories”. If the moment was truly that good, wouldn’t we want to fully immerse ourselves in it? Aren’t our most beautiful memories the ones which we didn’t care to record on our phones? I can more easily (and fondly) recall memories of wildly running about fields as a child than I can of the Instagram-worthy activity I did last week.

I suppose it would be too distrusting of the human race to place my conclusion on purely materialistic reasons. Photography, definitely in the more professional ranks, does serve a higher purpose. It is a more accessible format in which we can better understand stories. Think of all the journalists and photographers that report on tragedies around the world with devastating imagery, giving voice to the voiceless. Visually proving the existence of communities. It evokes a sentiment of importance, only a sliver of which we can internally recreate through our own pursuits.

We want to feel valued. We want to feel important. And we live in an age where this feeling can be accessed at an ever-increasing rate, whether we post our photos on social media or not.

It might just mean that we sacrifice being truly present in the moment.