I've had an Instagram since my senior year of high school, so it's going on five years that I've been actively posting photos on there. I have a little over 3,000 photos currently posted on my account (@rejeanag) and those posts go all the way back to when I was a little 17-year-old.
Recently, I was hanging out with an old friend and we, in the middle of the night, started scrolling through all these pictures, every single one of them. While doing this I realized something monumental: the majority of these photos were very dumb. They were those silly photos that techno-haters would call "frivolous" or "pointless" because they lack any apparent depth or meaning.
You know the kind, photos of things I had eaten, photos of alcohol, photos of random objects or things I thought were neat at the time. These were photos that I would have never taken if I hadn't had access to both a convenient cell phone camera and a way to publish them instantly. The further back I went, the more I realized how dumb some of my photos were.
And yet, every single one brought me back instantly to a time and place in my past like a nifty virtual scrapbook. For example:
That's a picture of diner coffee and soup from 75 weeks ago. I'm sure when I took that photo there were people around me who scoffed at how ridiculous I was for documenting such a bland and ordinary moment in my life. When I scrolled through my photos, however, I immediately remembered the context of this image.
It was 5 a.m. on Black Friday, my best friend and I were absolutely exhausted from a night of frantic shopping. We stopped at this little diner on our way home from Lancaster to warm up and relax. This one "pointless" photo brought me back to an entire night of memories; memories that I would probably have otherwise forgotten if not for this stupid picture of soup and coffee. Here's another example:
This a poor quality photo of a large Dunkin' Donuts iced coffee and a Boston Creme donut. Again, these are the kinds of photos that people are talking about when they say, "This generation is always taking their insta-pics of silly things like food and whatnot. Can't they just enjoy the present?!" Well, I was enjoying the present at the time this picture was taken.
This is from my freshmen year of college, my BFF and I were craving donuts for weeks before this moment. We stopped here after a night of little sleep (due to late night movie watching) and a morning of attending a very long, very energetic service at a Missionary Baptist Church in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
This donut, that coffee, it was a beautiful reward after weeks of craving and a long night and longer morning. And, most importantly, I would have definitely forgotten that feeling of simple triumph if not for this "pointless" photo.
For decades photography has been a luxury. People only took pictures of the things that were monumental in their lives because photos were precious commodities. Because of that, there's this mindset that photos should only commemorate births, marriages, vacations, beauty, and art. That's why I think a lot of people get uncomfortable with this new generation that takes pictures of everything; those things aren't important enough to deserve photos, right?
No one cares about your avocado toast or low-fat skinny latte. But here's what I have to say to that: So what? Photography has evolved, as technology is prone to do, and it has transcended into a medium that can capture the smallest of moments. And that's OK because even the smallest of moments are worth remembering.
Like I said, I have 3,000+ pictures on my Instagram right now. I have an additional thousand on my Facebook page, 4,000 sitting in my camera roll on my cell phone, and another 5,000 backed up onto Dropbox. I would wager 80 percent of those photos are silly, irrelevant and insignificant. I've experienced the judgmental stares as I take a photo of my dinner in a crowded restaurant. I've witnessed the eye rolls as I take a selfie with a particularly good looking cup of coffee. I'm sure a lot of you in the "selfie" generation have experienced similar judgments. But what a lot of these people who scoff at my generation's photography habits don't realize is how truly awesome it is to build such an exhaustive collection of personal photos starting at such a young age. Seriously, I've built a virtual scrapbook on my Insta that tells an interesting story about myself spanning from high school to college. Every single one of my "stupid" photos of food brings me back to a particular dinner, lunch, or midnight excursion that has a whole load of memories behind them from different stages in my life. Imagine how cool it would have been to know just exactly what kind of day your great grandmother had on May 8, 1926? How neat it would have been to look back through your great grandfather's life, even the small things like what he ate for breakfast one Saturday in 1922? If you had that kind of information you would cherish it because what may be silly now will one day be your family's history.
Basically, every memory is important. Every photo, no matter how frivolous, is an opportunity to remember a day in my life that I otherwise might have forgotten. As I get older, I treasure these stupid photos more than anything. So to all my fellow Insta-Addicts out there who have no shame in taking a picture of their morning toast, here's what I have to say to you: Ignore the haters and keep on Instagramming. These memories count just as much as the big ones. And to all the people who think I'm dumb for wanting to post a picture of my Starbucks pastry: Relax. Let go of all that anger, pick up a camera and try taking a photo of something that made you smile, even if it was only for a second. Then, five years from now, you can look back at that photo and remember that that was the day you stopped being such a grump.
