Living Through a Lens

I am nestled into the corner of my room, wedged between the dresser and nightstand, my legs stretched out in front of me on the floor. On my lap rests a large red vinyl photo album. I turn the pages one by one until I come to a tiny Polaroid with a scalloped white border, affixed with shiny gold corner mounts to the black page. In that small square, my mother and grandmother sit on a bench with my two older brothers, smiling, the World’s Fair Unisphere behind them.

I am three years old. I begin to sob.

I am not on that bench with my brothers. My tiny body shakes in distress. Where am I? Why did they leave me behind? My mother takes the album from my lap and laughs. “Susan, you weren’t born yet. You couldn’t be there.” The explanation helps not a bit.

This is my first memory of the power of a photograph.

I revisited that album again and again, feeling the same sharp edge of sorrow and disbelief. From that tiny photo grew a lifelong fascination with how those still, glossy, silent frames can make us feel so seen or so left behind. So happy or so full of loss.

Earlier this year, I spoke with a cousin who was sorting through shoeboxes and albums belonging to relatives who had recently passed away. He took a pragmatic approach to his archival duties. “I tossed the vacation shots unless people were in the frame—and even then, I just kept a few.”

Me, the owner of dozens of albums and photo boxes filled with carefully sorted negatives and labeled envelopes, was aghast. “You’re throwing them away? You mean actually putting them in the trash?”

He shrugged. “Why would we want hundreds of photos of mountains and beaches and the Eiffel Tower?”

My cousin is not just any relative sorting family photos, unaware of photography’s power. He had a career as a photojournalist, traveling the world and capturing profoundly moving images of war, famine, and communities in both turmoil and celebration. He has some credibility in this matter. So, I put my shock aside and thought about it. What will my kids do with my photo files? What meaning, if any, will those images hold for them?

These questions are no small matter. Photography is my hobby. I have the equipment, the aching back, and the images to prove it. It’s not uncommon for me to return from a week-long trip with a thousand digital images. My five-week trip to Southeast Asia in 2024 yielded 4800 photos. On my 105-day 2023 road trip, I took a total of 11,500. And let’s not even talk about the printed photos from before my first digital camera in 2004—thousands, accumulated over decades, of children, travel, well… everything really.

To answer my questions, I got to work. I took a fresh look at long-buried memories and faded prints (and decided to leave the digital photos for another time). This summer, I pulled out all my carefully dated and curated albums, the boxes of photos that didn’t make it into those albums (but were saved “just in case”), and ten boxes of slides. Rainy days became marathons of photo review and reorganization.

What is worth keeping? There was the photo of me dancing across the stage in my first community theater production—it made me smile.

What tells a story? The image of my son Louis dressed as a jar of Nutella for Halloween in Florence, Italy, sitting in the back of a bus while Italians stared and smiled—that one holds untold tales. If pictures are worth a thousand words, this one’s a full book.

What offers memories of the people and events important to me and my family? How about the last photo I have of three uncles together before one passed away. It’s blurry, but I don’t give a damn.

The result of a summer’s worth of rainy days? My cousin would be proud. I threw out thousands of photographs—blurry vacation shots, grainy nighttime snaps from my Kodak 110 Instamatic when I was eight, duplicate shots (in case the first or second or third didn’t work). I now have three boxes, arranged chronologically, ready to ship off to the scanning service. Those remaining photos are probably twice as many as there should be, but my discipline only goes so far.

Among those albums and boxes was a treasure trove of photos and slides from my summer studying in Denmark as an undergraduate architecture student. I went to Europe for four months with 14 rolls of film: everything my budget and suitcase would allow. I rationed those rolls carefully. What were the important stories I wanted to remember? To share? I could never be sure what might happen—where I might go, when I might need to take more photos than planned. But I knew those rolls had to last until the final day. Each choice carried a kind of risk, transforming me into a bookmaker wagering moments against memory.

None of us think like that anymore. With smartphones and digital cameras, our photo taking capacity is limitless. And I think we’ve lost something with all that unlimited storage and those endless memory cards.

That summer in Denmark, my camera played second fiddle to my sketchbook. My study program required daily drawings of the world around us. I spent hours walking through Copenhagen’s streets and hiking along the forest and coastal trails north of the city, searching for architectural details, public spaces, people, flora, and fauna. I was an urban detective in search of hidden jewels. The only skills required were a desire to see and to understand.

To sketch, I had to sit still, watching the shifting light, listening to the sounds around me, breathing deeply the wafts of baking Wienerbrød from a nearby café. I was in the scene; people would stop and chat, look over my shoulder, sometimes share their hopes or woes.

I don’t travel like that anymore. And I miss it.

These days, there’s no risk at all—no expense to taking a few extra shots. We shoot first, experience later. We run in, click the button, and move on.

That trade of experience and truly being in the moment, for the proof of presence photo, is a common sight in my travels. Take a moment on my U.S. road trip for example...

“Hey, can you move that thing? We want a family picture.”

I looked up, then glanced to the right and left before turning back to the man glaring at my tripod.

I offered my nicest, most polite smile and looked cheerily at his wife and three kids. “Hi there. I’m sorry, but everything’s set up. I’ve been here for a while. There’s lots of other space for your photo.”

“That thing’s taking up too much room. It shouldn’t be here,” he said again as he moved tight against me and started pushing. Actually pushing me.

I held my ground. The tripod was barely wider than my body, and I wasn’t taking up any more room than the hundreds of other people waiting for the sunset at Horseshoe Bend in Glen Canyon National Recreation Area.

And I don’t like bullies.

After one more attempt to intimidate me into moving, he gave up—but not before letting me know what he thought.

“F—k you, lady,” he said within earshot of his family as they moved about ten feet away, pushed into the crowd, snapped a flurry of selfies, and rushed back to their car.

In the silence that followed, I looked down at my camera, then across the landscape as the sun was setting. I never took the photo. I was rattled—not because he pushed me (I’m a New Yorker; I can push back when I need to)—but because maybe I saw my own reflection in that scene. Am I as bad as that? How much is the perfect shot worth to me? And at what expense?

I’m profoundly aware that looking through the lens alters our experience. We are no longer taking photos of our experiences—the act of taking the photo is the experience.

At a concert recently, I noticed everyone watching the musicians through the screens of their phones, capturing video for some future moment. Later, at home, I pulled On Photography by Susan Sontag off my shelf—a book I first read decades ago, long before phones turned us all into documentarians. Rereading it made me question my own habits behind the lens. Am I appropriating reality through photography? When I set up a tripod for a sunrise or sunset, am I turning experiences into collectible objects? Has Sontag pegged me exactly when she says that snapping a photo is a defense against the anxieties of modern life? Is my photo-taking a way to control experience rather than live it?

I don’t want to be the family at Horseshoe Bend. I see versions of them everywhere: the vlogger rearranging her lunch plates for a perfect shot at Blue Hill at Stone Barns without taking a bite of the delectable farm to table meal; the tourist at Yellowstone stepping within five feet of a bison for a selfie; the families at the Grand Canyon rushing through the sunset before Thanksgiving dinner, snapping selfie after selfie but never stopping to breathe and take in the wonder. Everywhere, the moment itself seems secondary to capturing proof of having been there.

Someone is keeping count. According to Photutorial.com, we will take 2.1 trillion photos this year; that’s 61,000 clicks every second, 221 million every hour. The numbers are staggering, and they grow by about 7% each year. That’s a lot of people living life through a lens. As I culled my own photographs, it got easier to toss out the doubles and the duds as the days went on. But still, I couldn’t help wondering, what was I really discarding? The moment itself, or just its proof?

I’d like to think I’m different. We all would. But I’ve been reflecting lately on what truly happens when I take a photo. On my annual photo workshops in Scotland, our guide Tommy implores us to soak in each new place before touching the camera. “Walk first. See first. Smell and listen.”

Tommy is an outdoorsman and a history buff in addition to being a crack photographer, and we all benefit from his approach. If you’ll forgive the pun, he sees the world through varied and colorful lenses—and that makes him not just a better photographer, but a more present human being. Experience isn’t the victim of the proof. Being in the scene isn’t sacrificed for the image.

As fun as it is to imagine a road trip without any photos at all (what would that look like? how would that change my experience?), I can’t be that drastic. I posted a photo on Instagram and my website every day on my U.S. road trip and I love that I can scroll through those images and relive my journey chronologically. Besides, I like to think my kids would keep a few of that trip and my upcoming adventures: Mom driving the Black Forest High Road in Germany. Camping in the Arctic Circle in Norway. And I hope those images would provoke questions and maybe a tiny bit of marvel: Did that tent really fit in the Blue Car? Did she really do that?

Perhaps I’ll “carry” only 20 rolls of virtual film for the journey. That’s about 700 images for four months, roughly six shots per day. How will I decide which moments to capture? Can photographing a moment enhance the experience rather than usurp it?

Whatever I do, I’ll embrace my Scottish friend Tommy’s way: arrive first, breathe, look, and listen before ever lifting the camera. And maybe sometimes, I will never lift a camera.

Of one thing I am certain: doing and experiencing are better than recording. That three-year-old girl understood the power of an image. But she’s learned, over time, that maybe the best photographs are the ones that remind us to live.