Where will all those photos go?

With the rise of smartphones, the world has become one big photoshoot. But just because everything can be immortalised, does that mean it should be?

In 2024 it is no longer clever or insightful, as perhaps long ago it once was, to make the astute observation that people are always looking at their phones. The main reason for this, of course, is that today everybody who has a smartphone can (and does) do just about everything on it. As someone who gave up their smartphone not long ago — in part in a bid to break an addiction to scrolling, though largely, if I am being honest, out of sheer frustration and growing disdain with modern technology and online culture — I was shocked at how much I had instinctively been using the thing. When I made the decision to give it up, I had started by making sure I figured out how to navigate the obvious things I would be missing out on; keeping in touch with friends, maps, the few genuinely funny memes I would no longer stumble upon, that sort of thing. Yet immediately after making the switch, it become rather apparent that there was an awful lot I hadn’t even really processed that I used my smartphone for on an almost daily basis. The regular bus route to work lost its soundtrack, my replacement phone having been invented long before Spotify or any other streaming services. I became reliant on my partner for train, concert and cinema tickets, unless I wanted to risk bad seats and higher prices if I waited and bought a physical ticket at the door. The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind that I now had to find whole new ways to access any money I had in my savings account, and if ever anybody asks me to send them money, rather than whip out my phone and hear the transaction notification on theirs a moment later, I now have to make a note (on the physical pen and notebook I carry around) to send it to them later, once I am home and have access to my laptop. I remember to check my emails about once a month. As my dad reminds me every time I see him, I can only afford to give up my phone at all because I work a 9-5 that means I only have to be at the beck and call of my employers while I am actually sat at my desk. So no, in this day and age, it is hardly surprising that when I am walking through London admiring the architecture of buildings I never noticed before, I have to do so while simultaneously dodging the fleets of people who either barrel towards me starring down at their screens, or (the far, far worse sin) who stop abruptly in the middle of the pavement to look at their phones. The far more interesting thing to observe, and something that guiltily has become my favourite people-watching pass time, is to notice what exactly it is that all these people are doing on their phones.

To clarify, I am not peeking over seats on the bus to read people text messages to their mums, or watching city commuters’ probably not-so-close-friends ‘close friends’ story in the reflection of the tube carriage window behind them. At least not a lot, anyway. But, trying your best not to be too nosy, when you do observe how exactly people are spending their time, some interesting trends start to emerge. Namely, people take a lot of photographs.

I have my theories about where this trend came from. The most likely, of course, is instagram and other social media apps. But it is not just that people are taking photos that baffles me but what exactly it is they are taking pictures of. Selfies are obviously high in ranking, usually in front of tourist sights or outside the neighbourhoods latest minimalist coffee shop (or Pret… there are a lot of Pret’s). Other notable mentions include other peoples pets, often taken covertly from behind or while trying to look like you are merely sending a text, shop displays and pretty (often cobbled) streets. My personal favourite, though, is the weather. The British stereotype that we love to talk about, think about, and complain about the weather really has made the transition over into the digital age, I am pleased to report. Stood outside work having a cigarette earlier this week, it started to rain, and almost immediately the crowd of students passing by on the other side of the street, rather than run for cover from the downpour, stopped almost in unison, raised phones to eye height and, like some bizarre, three-volley salute, began taking dozens of pictures not of each other but of the rain itself.

With the ease and convenience of a smartphone, taking pictures has replaced language and even memory as the go-to method for documenting a stunning number of daily developments. See a poster for something that looks interesting? Take a picture. Think you’ve picked out a nice outfit today? Snap away. Hair seems to have fallen in a way that looks good? Fifty more additions to the camera roll. We have become a culture obsessed with documenting, compulsively archiving, often so much so that it inevitably hinders our experience of the very thing we are trying so desperately to seemingly ‘remember in advance’.

My general disdain for modern technology does not actually, believe it or not, extend to digital photography. But one of the side effects of this technology, or more generally the fact that almost every digital device that is available today can take a picture in some form or another, is that there is no longer any cost to taking pictures. In many ways this is a good thing, I am certainly relieved that there is a cheaper method of taking photographs than regularly forking out the small fortune it costs to buy film and get it developed. Yet with absolutely no reason at any time anywhere not to take a picture, there is often times when it feels to me that taking photographs has rather lost any sense of value or importance. Millions of people are taking millions of pictures thousands of times a day. So what happens to all of them?

A large proportion, it seems, get lost to the void. How many thousands of raindrops and rainbows get snapped only to never been seen again? Of course, un-photographed weather phenomena have an even higher chance of being lost to memory, but the issue I raise is that when everyone is photographing everything instead of looking at and considering it, it is worth asking the question of what exactly we stand to gain. And when those few valuable pictures, of friends and family, photographs of memories rather than those in service of memory, get lost with the rainbows in the void, then everyone is the poorer for it.