Hothouse

By Molly Tompkins

I remember nothing of my sixteenth birthday, save the arduous task of making a memory. Everyone wore white and denim. After quick embraces, my friends hustled me into a series of photographs. Jaws popped against my cheek as they adjusted their smiles between clicks. I embraced from the side, the front, and the back. In the sea of photographs, surely a stellar version of reality existed. When the pasta arrived, iphones appeared above each dish like orbiting satellites. My friends zoomed in on their photographs, oohing and aahing at the dainty sprigs of basil and delicate frosts of grated parmesan. As if directed by fate, I spill red sauce across my blouse. Everyone laughs. “That’s just like her,” they say. I smile sheepishly, proud to have lived up to my quirky, messy reputation. One girl snaps a picture to “save the memory.” 

In many ways, photographs have become inextricable from both present-experiences and memory. Rarely does an event, or even an hour, pass undocumented. However, by seeking to capture a moment, we’ve destroyed its freedom. Both taking and viewing photos detracts from our fully experiencing reality. 

To begin with, taking pictures yanks people out of time’s current. Posing for pictures calls people away from the tasks in which they’re immersed. Imagine a world where we didn’t command people to stop and smile. The toddler could keep coloring, the boys run rampant in church clothes, the wine-toting women continue chatting, and the old men engage their reveries unbroken. Instead, we beckon people from their fascinations, arrange them in a row, and record their smiles. Photographs claim to chronicle our lives; however, they store images that would never have existed in the natural day. 

One might argue that candid photographs retain a moment’s integrity. However, the constant, expected invasion of the camera warps reality more than the traditional photograph. Growing up, my friends and I often had sleepovers. Midnight, with the adults and siblings asleep, marked the sacred hour for baring souls. Without fear, we discussed secrets: the embarrassing, the painfully hopeful, and the grotesque. Now, no such time exists. Every word, action, and mistake, must anticipate being broadcasted to hundreds of onlookers. 

Additionally, photographs have grafted a singular, “authentic” world. If an experience in a certain restaurant, vacation spot, or school fails to match the one defined by social media, it becomes inadequate. These expectations breed disappointment. Oftentimes, they prevent us from enjoying a spectacular, but unexpected, goodness. Walker Percy’s “The Loss of a Creature” explains how expectations mute wonder. For example, the tourists’ awe for the Grand Canyon can never rival that of the first Spaniard who witnessed it. While walking, the Spaniard suddenly stumbled upon a tear in the surface of the world. He marveled at the plunge of rock, the rainbow stripes and flashing river. Perhaps he wondered if he’d found the entrance to another world. In contrast, Percy’s modern traveler processes the Grand Canyon based on pre-existing notions: “if it looks just like the postcard, he is pleased; he might even say, ‘Why it is every bit as beautiful as a picture postcard!’ He feels he has not been cheated.” Like Percy’s tourists, we approach events hoping that they measure up to the advertised image. 

Photographs possess the power to deteriorate a memory. Occasionally, I enjoy sublime confidence at a party: I flirt, laugh unselfconsciously, and dance without concern for corporeality. The next day I see a picture. Mascara smudges my eyes, my belly bulges in the silk dress, my pale arms bend at odd angles. My experience mutates to match the photograph, and the night tinges with embarrassment. 

Relying on cameras to store our pasts disavows our powers of memory, narration, and emotional processing. When I first arrived at college, several girls introduced themselves to me by handing me their phones. They preferred that I learn their life story from their camera rolls, not their lips. Such a meeting allowed me only to infer the type of aesthetic to which each person aspired. Similarly, when I send my grandmother a picture of the beach in response to her question, “how are you,” I neglect to share any of my internal state with her.  Do I even know how I am? By outsourcing our ability to retrieve, process, and share information through story, we sideline ourselves from our own lives. 

Perhaps, if memory could be whittled down to the sum of colors, people, and events, photographs would suffice. However, memory outruns taxidermy. In the short story “Funes, His Memorious,” Jorge Luis Borges depicts a man with a perfect memory. He can detail specific leaves and the hairs on a stallion’s head. However, he cannot generalize or work in abstracts. He lives in isolation from other people, preferring to delve into the sensory movie of his memory. Alone, he recounts paragraphs from history books and creates useless numerological systems. Instinctively, we abhor this asocial life. Our choice to continue living proves that we prefer new experiences and relationships. This choice necessitates utilizing an imperfect memory. We must forget some things and ignore others. Events conglomerate into a sediment upon which we carry out life. Capturing scenes stems from the refusal to lose details. However, without blurring details, we cannot experience the sun on our closed eyes, the caws of seagulls, the smell of sand, and the ascension of the soul. 

Left unchecked, memory can fool us. In Julianne Barnes’ The Sense of an Ending, the protagonist, Tony Webster, suffers from a biased memory. No friends or family disrupt his false narrative. His alternate past, subconsciously constructed, excuses him from hateful crimes. When Webster is presented with a photograph proving the existence of his friend’s son, Webster fails to recognize him. Puncturing Websters’ false world necessitates the re-entry of relationship. Only through words and resurrected affection for others can Webster realize his fictitious inner monologue. He notes, 

We live with such easy assumptions, don’t we? For instance, that memory equals events plus time. But it’s all much odder than this. Who was it said that memory is what we thought we’d forgotten? And it ought to be obvious to us that time doesn’t act as a fixative, rather as a solvent. But it’s not convenient — it’s not useful — to believe this; it doesn’t help us get on with our lives; so we ignore it.”

Photographs provide chosen proofs for the lives we lead. In contrast, people force us to confront the truth. If I spent time cultivating relationships, rather than my camera roll, I would be forced to become a real person. 

A photograph can serve to remind us to live. Images of childhood games or friends’ smiles could spark secondhand joy. To an extent, we must meditate on the past to learn and mature. However, this power cannot apply to the multitude of photographs clogging my camera roll. I drool over pictures of New York pizza and Italian pasta, instead of boiling noodles with my roommate. I admire the way the sun slides down a tanned body in a beach photo shoot, instead of going outside and admiring the present sun pooling on leaves. If anything, photos should remind us how and why we live—not replace life. 

Oftentimes, we justify taking pictures by saying that we’ll need them in the future. However, we forget that dwelling in the past malnourishes the present. In “Funes His Memorious,” paralyzation is the cost for Funes’ perfect memory. He claims his invalid existence supersedes all other lives. “He reasoned (he felt) that his immobility was a minimum price to pay. Now his perception and his memory were infallible.” Although Funes can peruse the past, he sacrifices the present. Instead of plunging into new relationships and travels, Funes re-lived his life with exact precision. “Two or three times he had reconstructed a day; he never hesitated, but each reconstruction required a whole day.” When we sit, silent, scrolling through camera rolls or flipping photo albums, we too pay a fee—our present lives. Eventually, Funes died, alone, in a dark room, exploring the past. His lungs filled with mucus, a symbol of how obsession with past events drowns us in ourselves. 

I recall my friend when I build lego star wars ships. When I smell chocolate chip cookies, I hear him pounding down the stairs to grab one. Although his photograph elicits sad fondness, its immobile gaze seems unnatural. He never sat still. By continuing to live life, which he did with boisterous lovingness, I remember him. 

In conclusion, excessively taking photographs plucks us from the pure, vulnerable interactions with events and other people. Our lives become reduced to performing, and watching others perform. We attempt to save every moment. This hoarding leaves us with no space to explore. Once, life inspired images. Now, we run the risk of letting images tyrannize life.