Keys to Memory

Lately, I've been thinking about memory—not so much what we remember, but how.

Specifically photographs, and how they unlock memories in a specific and powerful way. When I stumble across a shot of myself in my grandmother's den playing checkers with my brother in my 90's jorts, I instantly remember so much: the table that would flip over to reveal a game board, how dark that room always felt, the fidgety shutters that would never quite close, the itchy mosquito bites. The image tugs on a thread and releases a whole string of memories. Photographs are the key my brain uses to unlock what I've tucked away.

It makes me wonder what memories people lost forever before photography existed to unlock them. The age of snapshot photography didn't just change how we remember, but how much we can remember.

Growing up, my mom had a tendency to photograph everything. My brother and I would roll our eyes and beg her to stop and be in the moment with us instead of capturing it, but now my mother’s intentions are becoming clear to me in a way that I'm just beginning to grasp.

She understood photography’s power. She knew she was giving her kids the documented childhood she never had—creating keys to unlock our future memories.

With a powerful camera always in my pocket, I carry thousands of these potential keys. The same device that fragments my attention is ironically equipped with the most powerful memory-capturing device I've ever owned. Each photo I take is a future portal, capable of transporting future me back to a moment that might otherwise vanish completely.

Photography has fundamentally altered human memory, and it’s obvious that we are in a new era with our phones where photography is abundant to a fault. We can easily access experiences that would have been lost to time, unlock sensations and details that seemed forgotten.

40 years from now, can you picture how we are going to experience all these digital photos we’re taking? I struggle to imagine it…

— Jess