My camera bag was on my shoulder, and without thinking, I reached for my 35mm SLR, determined to capture the moment of epiphany. The zip was half-undone when I paused, and slowly let the bag swing back. Instead of savouring the scene, I had reflexively raced to capture it, in fear of losing the fleeting moment. I stood in quandary, hands itching for camera bag, eyes feasting on the chaos around me. At the far side of the market, my friend had her tiny Canon Ixus (a.k.a. Canon Imp) out and was discreetly shooting the scene, and no one noticed. A middle ground.

As I watched her, I realised that if I had pulled my big Minolta from the bag, immediate attention would have been elicited sellers in the market. Matters moved to confirm this theory, as after a few exposures, the old women began clustering together and posing, unasked, for the little Canon.

I was happy with my decision - I still feel that if I had my produced my camera, the scene I was so eager to capture would have vaporised. I would no longer have been able to take lofty pseudo-objective stance of the unseen eye, instead I would have been photographing a contrivance, a fake, an approximation of the scene that had initially inspired.

It was only six months later - the middle of January, that I saw these photographs of the market. They are beautiful pictures - but they're not quite what I remember.

Memories are Meant to Fade

'Memories are meant to fade. They're designed that way for a reason.'

- Mace, in *Strange Days*

Like the replicants in Ridley Scott's movie *Bladerunner* or the newly-created Mr. John Furriskey in Flann O'Brien's novel *At Swim-Two-Birds*, who ‘entered the world with a memory but without personal experience to account for it,’ our memories serve to mould our personalities and reinforce our individualities. The experiences we carry around with us are meticulously, fluidly and irrationally recorded, and haphazardly *edited* by our memory. A recollection that embarrassed us five years ago may be the source of humour and gentle reminiscence today, just as an experience that was the source of pride may today be meaningless in our minds, if surpassed by a more important event.

So what is the point of all this vaguely mnemonic rattling? Does there need to be one? I could finish off by lecturing on how we should learn to enjoy memory for what it is. Or I could point out that this article was constructed from ideas and thoughts that I had to drag from my … memory. I could be mad, amnesiac, a liar, and a thief of other people's ideas - I really don't remember.

 

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