Authenticity in the digital age

Do we ever actually capture the moment?

My mum has these photo albums from when she was twenty-one and went travelling with her friends. All the stories she tells are unimaginable to me. They slept on balconies and beaches. They didn’t have a plan. I have never gone anywhere without a plan.

“It was a different time,” she says. And that is true. And what always feels the most changed to me is those photos. Those grainy, slightly brown-tinted photos where everyone always looks… real?

What is it that makes these photos feel more real? Companies keep telling us that the cameras in their phones are getting better and better, so why do the photos we’re taking feel further and further away from ourselves?

I think it’s the nature of how we pose for photos. Look, I quite often take three versions of each photo. Moving my phone to get the right lighting and angle of a tree or a cup of coffee. My sister and I always berated my mum for taking just one picture rather than a selection so we could choose what looked best. Google now are spending millions to show you how you can take ten photos and then comp together the best to ensure that friend who is always blinking in the photo that everyone else likes can be happy too.

We stand for the photos, and we put our arms around each other, and we put our legs forward to shift our weight so we look slimmer, and we fake the candid moment, and… And. And. And.

The moment is gone. Then we edit it. What is left?

When I had Instagram, I called it a photo album. I tried to see it as a photo album just for me. But I don’t know if we can really do that? If the photo album is intrinsically public, then it is not the same…

Is it possible to remove the weight of how you’ll be perceived by an audience? Even if that audience is just a few of hundred of your closest friends and those people you met three times in a club smoking area and haven’t spoken to in five years.

I’m not just talking about curation. My mum puts thought into her photo albums. She has dozens of them. She has meticulously kept a photo album her whole life, and yes: you pick the best photo to include. But it just feels different! You choose to show a photo album to a couple of people.

Social media? We are constantly showing people. It is inherent to the act of posting online.

I keep coming back to that moment of authenticity — the fact that a camera shatters the moment now. If I’m out dancing and there’s a phone in my face, then you’re suddenly thinking: is someone going to post me online? The moment is changed, not ruined necessarily, but changed.

Talking of changing the moment, there’s a great read about how TikTok has evolved the concert going experience.

When I watch the videos of a YouTuber I like, I sometimes wonder: what does it do to us to exist camera ready? How does it change our relationship with ourselves? She films herself reading, writing, cooking — and perhaps I am just self-conscious, but I simply cannot wrap my head around it. I watch the videos, but I am watching a performance. We watch these videos because we like the slice of real life, but it is an act. An act that mirrors life, but an act nonetheless. Right?!

Sometimes I think about getting a film camera. Some of my most favourite pictures ever taken have been on disposable cameras. You get one take and the photo is the photo.

I think it’s the closest we can get to being authentic on film. I think it’s the closest we can come to capturing an actual moment.