Why do we take photos?
“Why do we take photos?” my wife asked a random question while we drove to Cederberg in a storm.
“Because we are mortals”, I replied.
My answer was a deep one, but I am not the first one to give that answer. I live in Africa, and bushman paintings are everywhere. From the very beginning, we have wanted to chronicle our lives. Bushmen were the first artists, and we have continued their legacy. I have spent nights in caves where bushmen's paintings are on the walls. While sitting in front of the fire, I imagined myself sitting with the ancient people. Amongst other things, I saw a person sitting inside the cave on a starry night, painting a hunting scene of an elephant. I had a shiver through my spine. Although I didn’t know his intention of painting it, I recognised him as an artist. Did his leader ask him to record an event for future generations? Or was he just creative and wanted to immortalise what he saw? or both? How did he figure out what to use to preserve those colours for me to witness a few thousand years after his demise?
Aren’t we the same as our ancestors from the cave? We have painted, passed down our recipes to the younger generations, written down those musical notes to be played forever, and taken photos on film, and now billions of photos are taken in the palms of our hands.
Chronicling our lives is in our blood. We do it to fulfil our creative desire, but we also do it for memories, sharing smiles, making people aware of what’s happening in the world, and one day remembering all of this when we are nostalgic.
My answer, among other things, is that we do it because we are mortals. Wouldn’t most of us want to live forever if given a choice? If that’s true, we would desire to create memories and go back in time through art, architecture, films, photography, recipes, clothing, music, etc.
Your photos, or mine, might be ordinary for the person next to you, but they are unique. Imagine that many hundred years from now, or even thousands, if the earth survives the chaos we create, someone will look at our work and talk about us. Forget a few hundred or thousand years, in the next hundred years when none of us is alive, and this laptop I am writing on right now, next to a warm cup of coffee in Seattle Coffee shop in Cape Town, on a rainy day, with two ladies talking at the top of their lungs, with my noise cancellation headphones on… are gone, people will have our photos, videos, and our knowledge to remember us by.
When was the last time you created something for someone who will be born a hundred years from now?
Kind regards
Muji
