Remembrance 2: Photographic memory

It's not that I think there's anything silly about taking photographs, obviously. It's a very sensible thing to do. What I don't understand is the way holiday photographs are constructed: "...and this is us standing in front of the Balmoral Hotel and the Scott Monument". I mean, they know what the people look like - it's their friends or relatives and there's very few people enhance a monument or public building by standing in front of it so why are holiday photos made that way? Is it to prove they were really there? That they were enjoying themselves?

Must go and read Sontag again.

Ah, yes, there it is: It seems positively unnatural to travel for pleasure without taking a camera along. Photographs will offer indisputable evidence that the trip was made, that the program was carried out, that fun was had. ... Travel becomes a strategy for accumulating photographs. The very activity of taking pictures is soothing, and assuages general feelings of disorientation that are likely to be exacerbated by travel. Most tourists feel compelled to put the camera between themselves and whatever is remarkable that they encounter. Unsure of other responses, they take a picture. This gives shape to the experience: stop, take a photograph, and move on.

Susan Sontag On Photography