The memory box
I can’t express how happy it makes me to have this blog. Being able to share my thoughts and ideas in a way that feels natural to me is a gift. My hope is that it also works for you, and that some of my experiences might be of interest or maybe even help you in one way or another.
With all the social media platforms out there, it might look like I already get to share my thoughts and what I’m doing. But in reality, it never quite hits the mark. None of it feels like my own, or lacking a better word “comfortable” enough for me to be truly myself and share what I’d like to. Lately, I actually feel more secluded than connected. I know it sounds mad, but the internet often feels empty. I don’t know what’s happening with algorithms or how they filter the flood of daily content, but somewhere along the line, the humanity seems to have been lost.
And yet, that’s exactly why I’m here. Away from all that noise, this space feels like home. Here, I can share freely from something as simple as the behind-the-scenes of a commisioned project, to a review of gear I’ve loved for years, to deeper reflections on why I even make photographs in the first place. I’d also like to explore the challenges of living a creative life in a place that often feels hostile to creativity, always trying to squeeze you back into its “norms.”
I don’t know who will end up reading this blog, or if anyone will. But for those of you who do, I’ll do my best to share my thoughts and experiences truthfully. And on that note, I think the most important thing to share is what I call my “memory box.”
If I were to ask myself which images are the most important to me, the answer would always be the same: the ones from my own life. My friends, my family, my experiences.
Growing up in the 80s and 90s, maybe like many of you, I knew our family photo albums by heart. At a time when not everyone had a camera, photographs were taken with more deliberate thought. Film was limited, so people made each shot count. Then they’d print the photos, place them carefully in albums, and preserve them for decades.
Today, almost everyone carries a “camera” in their pocket, and social media encourages us to take thousands of pictures each year. We send them to one another, post them, or store them in the cloud, always at the mercy of technology, trends, and companies that may vanish overnight.
So I wonder: when our grandchildren are our age, will they find the same kind of connection to their family’s photographs as I did with mine? Do we take pictures today with any real sense of purpose? Do we sit and enjoy them? Or are they just fleeting tools of communication, lost as quickly as they were shared?
Long before photography, humanity found ways to pass down memories through heirlooms, artworks, letters, diaries. Photography gave us the chance to freeze a moment in time forever, and yet somehow, we still manage to lose it.
In conversations with people, I often hear a familiar regret: they wish they had albums like the old days, or photographs to hang on their walls. But either they never find the time, or they feel they don’t have meaningful images of their loved ones, despite having cameras with them at all times (their phones). A century ago, with far fewer resources, people created photographs that mattered. Today, surrounded by endless technology, many feel like they have none.
My own “memory box” began quite literally. As teenagers we would be messing about near the UN buffer zone in old-town Nicosia, we stumbled upon an empty green wooden ammunition box (these were more common than not). I took it home, and it slowly began to fill with photographs, notes, cinema tickets, and other keepsakes. Looking back, I’m grateful I kept those scraps of my life.
At sixteen, I started taking daily photographs, mostly of friends, family, and hobbies. Over time, I made it a habit to carry my camera everywhere. Yes, this sometimes comes with expectations from others, but the rewards are worth it when I look back at the collection of memories I’ve gathered. My literal memory box eventually became a digital one, and now I’m circling back printing real albums again, just like my grandmother once did. And now I get to witness the impact this tradition has on my daughter. She loves flipping through our albums, asking about the people in the photos, recognising even those friends who live far away. I have no idea how this shapes her, but I can only imagine it’s for the better.
Albums, though, are not always easy. They can also confront us with memories we’d rather leave behind, breakups, relocations, friendships that faded, the undeniable signs of aging, and the faces of those no longer with us.
The passing of time on those pages is both a blessing and a curse.
Of course, this is nothing new. My grandmother’s wedding album, for example, has photographs where certain people were literally scratched out with a pen “deleted” from her life. Friends of mine have told me similar stories, of relatives cutting people out of photos entirely. It’s fascinating, this act of editing the past to suit the present, proof of how even frozen moments are never immune to reinterpretation.
For me, the essence of documenting our lives lies not in creating picture-perfect postcards from our travels. Those can be bought in any souvenir shop. What matters is capturing the way we lived and experienced these moments.
