How should we document our lives?

In an era of digital clutter, how should we document our lives? An obsession with capturing each and every moment might have a bigger effect on our reality than we realize.

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Sep 10, 2024

As we began sorting through my mother’s things in the weeks following her passing, Michelle and I were immediately drawn to her camera. It’s a late ‘70s Nikon FM series that shoots 35mm film. I have many fond memories of her lugging it around on various childhood trips, its faded yellow strap around her neck.

The Nikon was quickly tucked away into our bag, but we spent much of that week looking at the thousands of photographs it had taken. My mother had stored them in albums and shoeboxes in her home. Desperate to keep everything in eternal digital form, I gave Michelle the miserably tedious task of scanning as many photos as she could. Three or four hours in, she asked, ‘Do you want me to scan all these random pictures of the countryside in France?’

‘Yes, do everything!’ I insisted. Weeks later, as I looked through the scanned photos on my laptop, I realized my mistake. While the landscape photos my mother had taken during her time in the South of France had meaning to her, they felt unending and unimportant when compared to the photos of our family and friends.

Since returning to Paris, the camera has been a joy to have – even without the added value of knowing that it was my mother’s. We’ve had good fun taking pictures and, especially, waiting to see how they turn out. There is something magical in the mystery of it all. These days, we’ve all become so accustomed to shooting thousands and thousands of photos on our smartphones and checking the results right away. A friend takes a photo of another and is asked: ‘How does it look? Lemme see,’ before taking two or three more to make sure the picture is perfect – i.e. shareable on social media.

And with no limitation on the number of photos we can take, we photograph and film far more than ever before. But when I open the photo library on my phone, I rarely take time to look through each photo or video. I scroll quickly, searching for something specific, and move on. Most of my library is digital clutter.

This superfluous ocean of pixels is ubiquitous. When it’s so easy to ‘capture’ a moment, we find ourselves trying to capture them all. It begs the question: what is worth documenting? And what does it even mean to document something in the first place?

Michelle and I came upon this subject via our elongated canine companion, Pecco. Pecco is an 8kg, not-so-miniature, miniature dachshund. His adorable nature results in an outrageous collection of videos and photos on our phones. Michelle is particularly guilty of wanting to grab her phone to catch every silly face or contorted sleeping position. On one such occasion, I asked her, ‘You have like 4 million photos of him sleeping already, do you really need another one?” (I refuse to comment on the number of Pecco photos on my own device.)

We both agreed that we’d perhaps be better off just looking at and loving the dog in said moments, rather than trying to capture them. How much do we miss when we see these moments through our screens? And how often will we look through each of these thousands of nearly identical pictures?

The trend toward over-documentation is not a new one. Back in 1977, long before digital cameras were household items (let alone smartphones), Susan Sontag argued in On Photography that the practice had already begun to saturate with industrialization:

That age when taking photographs required a cumbersome and expensive contraption… seems remote indeed from the era of sleek pocket cameras that invite anyone to take pictures… Recently, photography has become almost as widely practiced an amusement as sex and dancing - which means that, like every mass art form, photography is not practiced by most people as an art. It is mainly a social rite, a defense against anxiety, and a tool of power.1

With this saturation, we’ve gone from wanting to document moments – birthday parties, Christmasses, vacations, etc. – to something beyond. And thanks to social media, constant documentation has further transformed into incessant broadcasting. I fear Sontag may have passed out had she scrolled Instagram for 5 minutes.

And while the early days of Facebook and eventually Instagram were the first steps in accelerating the amount of ‘content’ we put out into the world, things hit hyperdrive levels with the arrival of the ‘Story’ format. It is no longer about big or important moments, it is about every moment. Prior to stories, those in my social media professional sphere debated: ‘Is it post-worthy?’ Does this moment merit addition to the permanent collection?’

‘Stories’ solved that. Something doesn’t make the cut for a post? You can now post a nearly unlimited number of transient stories. Make sure you get a picture of that cappuccino you had this morning for stories. Take a video of your flight landing for stories. And of course, nothing worse than the 20+ videos with miserable sound quality from your friend who went to a concert last night.

The effects of this need to document and broadcast are far-reaching. Firstly, there is the obvious: we all spend an insane amount of time scrolling and tapping through hundreds of images and videos a day. We’re not only filtering through our own digital clutter, we’re swipping through everyone else’s.

The second consequence of over-documentation is how it affects us in the moment. We used to have to make the conscious decision to bring a camera with us in order to be able to capture life. The proximity of our smartphones, however, allows us to be in a permanent state of ‘ready to document.’ While this felt like a huge advantage when I had my first smartphone more than a decade ago, it has slowly begun to feel more and more like a burden. We go through our lives constantly analyzing what might be worth documenting. And by documenting moments, we bestow upon them unwarranted importance. As Sontag writes, “The omnipresence of cameras persuasively suggests that time consists of interesting events, events worth photographing.”2 Getting a cappuccino has transformed from an unnotable daily event to an opportunity to contribute to a larger image of ourselves - our personal brands.

The physical act of documenting has its own consequences. In our last piece, we examined The Power of Awe, a transformative emotion that we only experience on rare occasions in life. Awe has a remarkable ability to make us feel aware and present; it strips away the busyness of life. Yet, social media tells us that we must try to capture this awe. Think of every concert, every sports event, every landmark you’ve been to, and remember how they’ve transformed into a horde of smartphones filming and photographing. The presence that is brought on by awe is disrupted. We sacrifice the full experience of awe in order to certify our having lived it. ‘Pics or it didn’t happen’ as the saying goes.

The trend of using photography as concrete evidence of having lived an experience has been in the making since cameras entered the mass market, as Sontag explains:

It seems positively unnatural to travel for pleasure without taking a camera along. Photographs will offer indisputable evidence that the trip was made, that the program was carried out, that fun was had… A way of certifying experience… Travel becomes a strategy for accumulating photographs… Most tourists feel compelled to put the camera between themselves and whatever is remarkable that they encounter. Unsure of other responses, they take a picture.3

Indeed, the automatic reaction to reach for your phone to photograph feels like a cop-out at times. There is perhaps no better example of Sontag’s frustration with certifying experiences than taking photos of artwork in museums. Rather than patiently absorbing and observing a painting, people snap pictures of them. Even worse, they line up to get their photo taken alongside it. This is, if I may say so, utter madness.

I struggle with interrupting moments to document them. As my social media output has shrunk exponentially over the past ten years, I still want to immortalize points in time even if they’re just for me. Some moments are simply too important not to hold on to. I was convinced, though, that in choosing to document a moment I was diminishing my ability to experience it fully. So, Michelle and I set out to find just how documenting affects our memories.

We came upon a 2013 study by Linda Henkel of Fairfield University, who coined the term photo-taking-impairment effect. Henkel and her team invited participants to tour a museum and tasked one group with observing objects while a second group had to both observe and photograph the objects. She found that the act of taking photos inhibited participants’ abilities to recall the objects clearly:

‘When participants took photos of whole objects after viewing them, they remembered fewer objects and remembered fewer details about the objects… than when they only observed the objects without photographing them.’4

At this point in our research, I was thrilled. The first study we find and bingo! My suspicions had been confirmed. Our constant documenting of Pecco diminishes our ability to appreciate his beauty. I saw a logical outline of how the rest of the blog would go:

However, one study is not enough to prove a point. So, we set out for more evidence. To my narrative surmise, further research revealed that things are not so black-and-white.

A follow-up study in Psychological Science by Barasch, Diel, Silverman, and Zauberman expanded on Henkel’s work at the museum. This team set out to study how intentionality might affect the photo-taking-impairment effect. Where Henkel’s participants had been obligated to photograph specific objects in a museum, Barasch and her team allowed participants to photograph objects of their own volition. They found that people were actually more likely to remember the objects they had photographed at will than those who had not taken photographs of anything.5

There goes my Pecco theory and my nice-and-neat linear argument. It now seems that should we reach a day when Pecco is no longer with us, Michelle will be able to remember his face better than I will.

Of course, it would be silly to think that there are never moments worth capturing. The key element lies in determining which moments are worth capturing and how we capture them. Intentionality - i.e., documenting should not be automatic but done consciously. In their research, Barasch and Co. use the term self-relevance, “we argue that people in fact take photos in order to engage with and remember those experiences that are self-relevant.”6

How does one determine what is worth ‘engaging with’ and what is self-relevant? On the surface, it seems rather easy to determine - anything that might be interesting to me could be defined as self-relevant. But how much of what is interesting or relevant to me is determined by myself and how much is determined by what I consume?

As Sontag noted, photographs are a ‘tool of power.’ The ability to create physical evidence of one’s perception remains unique. Prior to its invention, our best attempts to impress our view of the world on others came through writing and art. While these tools may even surpass photography in certain respects, they don’t have the authority of ‘factual’ representation that photos provide. We accept that with writing and painting, the creator’s biases will shape the image, whereas we see a photo as a recreation of reality (we are quick to ignore how biased the photographer can be in choosing how to frame and take photos).

The power of photography comes not only from the ability to concretize the immaterial but the way that it can shift and form perceptions. We treat photographs (and video for that matter) as evidence. Therefore, the documentation we consume informs our perception of reality.

This is where things get tricky. In our quest to photograph that which is self-relevant, we are inevitably influenced by that which we have consumed. We expect the world to reflect the photographs and videos that we see. In turn, when we set out to document our own lives, we subconsciously (or perhaps even consciously) match our lenses to mirror the preconceived notions of how things should look.

When the ‘reality’ presented in images does not match the reality experience in person, we get things like the now well-known Paris Syndrome, a condition most often experienced by Japanese tourists who, upon arriving in France, are shocked that the city of love doesn’t quite live up to expectations.7 Modern digital photography can take this a step further, with the latest smartphones offering technology to remove unwanted people from photos, fix blur, and so on. You won’t have to wait for the crowd to clear at the Eiffel Tower - simply pretend it wasn’t there!

When we aren’t looking for our photos to match our preconceptions, we want them to portray a certain version of ourselves and our lives to the world. We are on the lookout for content that we know other people will ‘like’ or engage with. Am I taking a picture of this painting (again, please do not take pictures of paintings) because it resonates with me or because I anticipate that it will resonate with others? When resonating with others becomes the basis for why we take photos, we inevitably begin to document things that we have seen others documenting first.

Again: am I taking a picture of this cappuccino because I engage with it or because I am recreating an aesthetic that I’ve consumed online? Maybe I slide my hardcover book into the photo next to my coffee, just to let everyone know that I’m an avid reader. I’m framing the image I want to broadcast in order to form a perception of myself to others. Let’s take things a step further: did I choose to come to this café because it appealed to me or because it conforms with my expectations of how a café should look according to what I consume? Because I know I want to take a picture of my coffee, I choose a place that will be most ‘documentable.’ As French philosopher Jean Baudrillard put it:

The whole world is meant to be filmed, and all events, to be the most insignificant, are meant to be lived by a kind of anticipation of their broadcast. This anticipation is the scenario, the operational model of how it should be lived, and the image is its reality principle.8

When a desired image becomes the guiding principle of our reality instead of the recording of reality, how authentic is it? Baudrillard’s take is extreme, considering photographic, cinematic, and television images as perverse or even diabolical for their suggested realness, but the question is an unnerving one. The enraged Frenchman’s frustration can be neatly sidestepped, though, should we accept that images are not true representations of reality. If we understand them as flawed by nature, we can see them in a more appreciative light - as both a tool and a form of expression.

Our memories are not as reliable as we would perhaps like them to be. Every day, moments fade from our brain’s archives, as others that are held onto become twisted and blurred. Photographs and documentation serve as a nearly universally available way to preserve and eternalize. They give us physical (or digital) representations of people, places, and experiences that we can cherish forever. They also offer us insight into the perception of others. Once we acknowledge the bias of the photographer, we can understand how the photo represents their view. When done thoughtfully, documentation can be a powerful tool for good.

How, then do we document thoughtfully? If we heed Baudrillard’s warning, we should start by considering our choices in how we live our lives before we even get to the step of documenting anything at all. This is a dangerous rabbit hole to go down as we could quickly slip into an existential crisis (why do I do anything the way I do, why do I like anything I like, etc), but there’s nothing wrong with having more intention in the choices we make.

Once we’ve made that choice about where to go and what to do, we’re faced with a second question: ‘Is it worth it to interrupt this moment in order to capture it?’ There are a number of factors at hand here: do I have a similar photo already (i.e. the Pecco collection)? Will a photo do this moment justice? What other senses might be missed out on by focusing only on the image?

If we’ve committed to the interruption, we get to our third question: ‘Who am I documenting this for?’ As it turns out, this might just be the most important question of all. A third study, also by Barasch, examined how our intended audience can affect our experience when documenting. Their conclusion is damning for social media. ‘Across five studies using multiple methodologies, we find that compared to taking photos for one’s own memory, taking photos to share with others leads people to enjoy their experiences less.’9 Essentially, when we take photos to broadcast them to a larger audience, we worry about how we are being perceived, and our enjoyment is diminished.

Furthermore, the effectiveness of photography as a memory tool is lessened, ‘Taking photos to share makes people more likely to remember the experience from a third-person perspective.’ We are no longer conserving our personal recollection of a moment, but rather an image of how we feel that moment would be perceived by others. (On a brighter note, Barasch’s study noted that the negative consequences are reduced when the intended sharing audience is made up of close friends, as we are less likely to be concerned with our image being damaged).10

Our best bet, then, is to be more mindful of our documentation. Take photos thoughtfully and with attention to the subject. Take them for yourself, to remember the moments and feelings that feel important to you. Take them knowing you might be the only person to ever see them, and accept that if you share them they are a reflection of your perspective on life. Don’t take them for social media, even if that’s where they end up (let’s be realistic).

Mindful documentation should look different for each and every one of us. What’s relevant to you is up to you to decide. Michelle and I have found that this kind of documentation has been more achievable using my mother’s Nikon. We don’t always have it with us. It isn’t as easy or convenient. Our amateur skills result in lots of blurry and messed up photos that certainly wouldn’t make the cut for socials. But, the photos we get feel more real than the perfectly crisp shots from my iPhone. And 20 years from now, when I look back at them, I hope they will be as precious to me as the ones my mother left me to hold on to.

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PS: don’t worry we’ll still share occasional photos of Pecco!

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How should we document our lives?

In an era of digital clutter, how should we document our lives? An obsession with capturing each and every moment might have a bigger effect on our reality than we realize.

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