Sometimes we get so caught up in writing history, or making it, if we’re high profile types, that even as we post photos to Instagram or Facebook we forget that we, too, are recording a visual history.

How long this history will last, however, depends on the permanence of the digital record. Will it be there forever? Or will it, like the famous Library of Alexandria, be destroyed by powers and empires of the future. As is so often the case in history, time alone will tell.

The real question then becomes, what are we taking images of, and what for? To look back on every fascinating detail of yesterday’s meal a year from now? Doubtful. You and I know that we really only look at those images when Google photos reminds us they exist. How many people regularly review all 387 images from their last vacation? Not many.

What are our real reasons for recording so many images? Habit? Peer pressure? To share? To record beauty? To cling to the past? Because we can and we remember the days when film was expensive? To build the appearance of a more beautiful life than the one we actually experience? For business? All possibilities, and certainly something to ask ourselves from time to time.

But despite all I’ve said, and in the interest of recording my history from yesterday, and especially the beauty of the Autumn season as the leaves finish their descent to the ground, is a vignette to add to the digital record…

Keep thinking history…

~ Amanda Stiver

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