We Don’t Take Photos to Remember. We Take Them to Be Seen.

Rhea Krishna
11 hours ago
4 min read

Last week, I experienced the girlhood-classic conundrum of running out of iPhone storage. The warning on my screen, alongside the red, disproportionate percentage of my photo album occupying 70% of my entire storage, forced me to finally go through my gallery. And when I did, I realised I had so much junk floating around there; most pictures were so meaningless. Why did I have 40 live pictures of me with a drink? Or why did I have 35 different split-second screenshots of a singular TikTok? I realised that these were all pictures I had taken for Instagram. So they definitely had some designated utility, but they also saturated my photo gallery with worthlessness. Something that was supposed to be an extension of myself had become so unrecognisable. I had to stop, detox from Instagram and do some serious introspection. I asked myself: what was the real purpose behind all my pictures, and whose eyes was I taking them for?

Galleries are so intimate; they hold our inner gaze, inner circle, innermost thoughts. There is something so innately human about them. But these days, I wonder if photo albums are gravitating towards something robotic, especially when I see 40 burst pictures of myself in the same outfit, place and position, with such minimal variation; ironically, what makes all the difference in the final product. There is something so cold and unforgiving about pictures we take for social media; we long to erase wonky smiles, half blinks, the occasional pimple. We zero in on and scrutinise these minuscule details; we give them such a self-inflated sense of relevance and importance. We isolate the image from the humans behind it: so zoomed in and obsessed with image-centric significance, we end up missing the soul or identity of photographs in the first place. What exactly are we capturing here? Are we documenting memories, or are we creating a unique mosaic of our timeline? Or are we surrendering our individuality, the essence of being human, to circulate our photographs in echo chambers on social media? Maybe it's worth zooming out and reevaluating what our galleries actually represent. Because at the end of the day, they are a map of our lives, of every moment that we have lived.

There's something very grounding and present about taking pictures; you snap them and then continue to live in the moment with the reassurance that at some point you can look back on them; it's supposed to be very reassuring and comforting. But with social media-driven pictures, there's so much staging and external pressure on the final product; one can never seem to enjoy the act of living in the present. When I'm not taking pictures to show other people and instead taking them to document my own timeline, I start to think outside the box. My entire perspective is transformed. As an artist, the difference I feel when it comes to instincts and thought process is monumental. I stop thinking about the final product, what it might look like, what people might say, and instead, I immerse and devote myself to the art of experimentation completely. When there is no pressure to “post”, “unveil” or “reveal” my images in some sort of dramatic occasion, I am much more incentivised to photograph pictures from weird angles or try something unconventional. Being more present and intentional has almost restored my individuality, and there is such a sacred intimacy born in that process; these pictures belong to me, and I have full agency over how they are captured, edited and stored. When I'm not bothered about chasing validation through my pictures, I feel myself as an artist evolving. I feel this innate sense of originality return to me like a fifth limb, and my gallery steadily rebuilds into something much more meaningful.

On a personal front, I also rarely feel the overwhelming need to constantly look at myself in my front camera; I am a lot more reassured in my appearance, and I don't feel this compulsion to photograph myself every single time I look good. This idea that “I’ve got a good picture, now I can finally enjoy my night” has become such a tedious compulsion. We have really conditioned ourselves to believe that if our faces aren’t documented, the beauty didn’t even exist in the first place. It has become a genuine source of despair when we find ourselves lacking that one perfect picture to do justice to our outfit. Granted, it is nice to have a documented memory of when you looked good, but why has it become such a make-or-break act? Why does it dictate and control so much of our night? Looking back, the compliments people gave me in person seemed to have no weight or relevance if I felt I didn't have pictures to share with 500 strangers on the internet. Spending more time off Instagram, I have found that I no longer need that one statement, life-altering picture that captures my entire night perfectly. I find myself a lot more content with spontaneous photos that scatter across my gallery: blurry videos of me dancing, eating, laughing. Times when pulling out the camera felt like a choice, not a compulsion. A gift, not a deadline. Maybe people will see these pictures, maybe they won’t, but I finally feel like I have the power of choice again rather than the crushing burden of expectation. We tend to attach power and meaning to so many little gestures, and I’ve realised: anything that is created can as easily be destroyed.

These days, I find myself less bothered by a bad photo. I think before, I would immediately feel such a knee-jerk reaction of revolt. I would almost panic, grab the phone and wipe that photo off the face of the earth because I felt the scorn of hundreds of eyeballs seeing me imperfect. My friends would always say, “It's not going anywhere; I just want to keep it for myself”, but that pressure of being seen always crept up and controlled me. These days, I don't delete them; I shrug and let them exist because I think I've stopped deriving utility from my pictures and started treating them as an extension of myself. I think of my parents’ photo albums from the 90’s and how there are so many half-blinks, awkward smiles, overexposed flash and how much I still truly enjoy looking at them because I see so much life. Maybe we need to start living for our galleries again and stop performing.