Opinion by Ivy Nina Valentina xx
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I started making my own photo albums kind of by accident. Or rather, the idea to start wasn’t really mine.
Last year, I travelled to Europe for 10 weeks (still is so crazy to me that that statement is real and true). My birthday was literally the day before my sister and I left. Knowing that I was bringing my film camera with me, my best friends, Anyka and Senna, bought me a bunch of film rolls and a coral coloured photo album to store the photos in. Although I was already a massive film photography enthusiast, it had never occurred to me to actually print out the photos I had been taking. Up until that point, I had been perfectly content with popping down to Film Never Die to get my negatives developed and calling it a day. I would send the digital scans to the friends that were in them and store the files in a folder on my laptop, often never to be opened or returned to again. I was yet to discover the magic of cementing my memories in a physical form.
When I came back from Europe, I ran to get my 12 rolls of film developed. A costly feat, but one I was more than happy to commit to. I had just spent 10 weeks documenting some of the most interesting and beautiful places, people and experiences and I was dying to know how this was reflected in 35 mm. The results were stunning. A glowing multi-coloured catalogue of my sun-soaked days and funny stupid adventures. I wasted no time in getting all 360 photos printed and splayed across my bedroom floor; this became my post-trip project.
I absolutely revelled in the process of chronologically ordering my photos and slipping them into the little plastic sleeves of my album. Sitting surrounded by these 6×4 inch prints, I felt that I was reliving and truly absorbing the amazing memories I had just made. Swimming in a gold-tinted collage of all of the wonderful experiences I had had and remembering even the challenging or mundane moments between the camera clicks that I hadn’t captured. It was a very reflective and meditative process. Yes, it did make me a little sad that it was all over, but it also helped me to deeply appreciate my travels and everything I had learnt about the world and myself while I was away.
This photo album now stands as a lovely collection of the friends and memories I made during that time. It is completely personal to me. I decorated the cover and front pages with souvenir postcards I had saved and scrapbook-y bits that hadn’t made it into my travel journal. Stamped on the corner of each photo is the date of when it was taken. I even fashioned a pocket in the back cover of the album to store the negatives. Despite previously thinking them to be useless after development, I had kept them – they had just seemed more sentimental this time around, more important to me. Undoubtedly though, my favourite part of this album is the captions I wrote by hand beside each image. Never more than a couple lines long but always providing the hidden details of the photos they accompany. The location where the photo was taken. How hot it was or how delicious the meal was. The names of the friends captured. The reason why we were laughing so hard. I cried while making this album. Cried of joy and of longing. Cried for the beauty of everything I had seen and done and cried because there it all was, in front of me and in my hands, to be kept safe and preserved for decades to come.
But what can be said for the tens of thousands of photos I have stored on my phone? Our phones are constantly marching towards their own demise. They are designed to do so. This ensures that something better and more expensive can come along and replace it – business as usual. But what happens to the memories I entrust my device with when it becomes redundant? Do those parts of my life die with it?
There is a false sense of security afforded to us by the camera roll in our phones. Yes, our photos are technically stored there, but when our phones go bust, so do these photos and all of their beautiful memories. You might have your digital albums backed up somewhere, but even then, what happens when that technology becomes obsolete?
In addition, the camera roll is a much less sacred home for these memories than a physical photo album. Scrolling through your phone to locate these preserved moments, you’ll find that you have to first trudge through a sea of junk to get there. Pointless screenshots. The accidental photos you took of the inside of your pocket. 400 selfies taken to secure the right angle and lighting. And probably a bombardment of notifications all the while. There is no sanctity there. No considered curation. No little notes. No personal touch. There is a limitlessness to the phone camera roll that makes the important moments and photos within it feel lack lustre. Digitally scrolling and flicking through an old photo album simply do not produce the same sense of joy. The latter feels like a nostalgic escape. An all-encompassing portal taking one back to a time once lived. It is real and in your hands. In comparison, the former is a stream of coloured lights you’re bound to click away from as soon as another app pings for your attention. Scrolling is such a fast and mindless activity that society has become accustomed to. When we interact with our photos in the exact same way, the brain being a pattern-driven creature will only treat the associated memories as such: banal and unimportant.
There’s something in the care of physically handling your memories. Decidedly ordering and putting them somewhere. Giving them a home for safekeeping. Cementing their existence and ensuring that they can be returned to when the time is right. It heightens the sense of appreciation that these moments happened. And there truly is nothing more special than pulling out a physical album with family and friends and poring over the photos inside. It is such a bonding experience. We recall certain places, events, people and objects that were in our lives and in some cases maybe aren’t anymore. We reminisce on all that was and is dear to us and as we move the pages back and forth, we often find a forgotten story to be retold. It is history restored. It is pure magic. Having these memories – which unlock these cherished connections – floating up in the ether of my phone makes me feel uncomfortable and estranged. It feels like I’m entrusting technology with a part of my life that is much too priceless.
Since that first album capturing my 2024 Europe trip, I have printed out every roll of film I have gotten developed. My recent purchase of the Kodak PixPro means there’s also been a few digital photos thrown into the printed mix. The stack of photo albums under my bed is growing fast – I have just begun my fifth. They are my prized possessions, just like the journals I have been chronicling my life in since I was 16. It’s funny because I used to have this idea that I wasn’t a sentimental person. This is so crazy – you’ve gotten this far into the opinion, I’m sure that much is obvious. But the writing has been on the wall since I was a child. As a kid, I adored the TV show Franny’s Feet. Franny went on wondrous adventures, but what fascinated me most was her shoebox of souvenirs and trinkets she had collected to commemorate and honour these travels. I created my own version of this shoebox out of a safe disguised as a book from Smiggle. The same friends who bought me my first photo album also gifted me this personal vault as a birthday present when I was younger (they have always truly known me). Within it, a vast collection of memories is stored, even still to this day. Pieces of confetti from my first concert. Letters and cards from friends. Photo booth strips. Carnival toys. All kinds of things. I have always been a collector of memories, and I now continue this practice with photo albums. It is so special and important to me.
I do worry what will become of the moments that I capture in haste on my phone and do not have the mental energy to wade back to for their preservation. But I find comfort in the fact that I do have some kind of practice in memory conservation. I implore you to start making photo albums! Pick 20 of your favourite photos you’ve taken on your phone in the last month and start there! Make a habit out of this and in a year’s time you’ll have an album full of precious moments. A gorgeous, meaningful and completely personal time capsule.
We need to stop relying on our phones for everything. It is to the detriment of the experiences that make us feel human. Special memories should not be throwaway jpeg files. They mean something to us, and should be treated with a kind of rarefied care to reflect that. Bringing your memories physically out of technology and making them real in the world is such a special thing. And what a pleasure it is to look back lovingly on these moments! To get to spend time suspended in memory with your family and friends. To pull out a treasure chest full of experience and people and love and life lived. To show those moments to your children and grandchildren! How special! It makes me feel giddy and in awe and so full of the world and its love. That’s a feeling I think we should fight to keep around. Even if it means taking the extra effort to run down to Kmart and wrestle with their printers every few weeks.
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