The Day without a Photograph
By Ayman Fouad Abdelgawad
An experience does not become less real because it leaves little evidence.
I am interested in the slight pressure to preserve a pleasant moment before it has finished happening. A scene begins to offer not only an experience but an image of having had the experience.
Photographs can be precious. They rescue details and connect us with people who were absent. The question is whether recording has become an automatic condition of believing a moment was properly noticed.
Some days leave only an impression: a relaxed conversation, a change in light, the feeling of returning home. Their lack of documentation does not make them wasted. Memory may keep less detail and still preserve something important.
I would like to leave room for experiences that do not need to become material. Their value can be spent in the act of living them.
There is a modest freedom in having nothing to show and no reason to apologise for it.