A world of photographs but they’re nowhere to be seen

At last count, I had 11,296 photographs on my phone; if I printed them out as standard ten-by-eight pix and put back-to-back, that’s not far off two miles. So it’s fair to say that if I do live to be a hundred, it’s unlikely that I’ll ever see some of them again.

To be honest, there are loads not worth seeing anyway because they were just moments in time – a blue sky, a rolling river, dappled light through the trees…all highlighting the wonder of nature, but they could have been taken by anyone, any day of the week.

There are also many duplicates – not exact replicas because the iPhone picks that up and offers to merge them, but just a couple of shots taken at the same time to make sure no one had their eyes shut or mouths wide open in the first one.

Again, if you had the time and inclination, you could probably reduce the 11,000 photos by a couple of hundred on that front and you’d have lost nothing. But because you’re not using camera film like you once did, and because there’s sufficient storage on your phone or in the cloud, there’s no real need to do any of this.

Which begs the more metaphysical question; are photos that haven’t been printed really photos at all?

The simple answer is that of course they are, in that they are images of a moment captured for posterity – but if they’re not on a wall or in an album, do they exist at all?

I mean, you can see them yourself but no one else can unless you give them access to your phone. So they’re your private record of those moments in time.

Conversely, when we had to pay for photographic film – and presuming we had a camera at all – we took very few photos, and almost never on a night out. Which was a very good thing.

Of course you took photos on special occasions – weddings, Christenings, birthday parties, First Communion – but you didn’t have to remain on high alert in the pub in case someone posted your picture on social media before you’d even had a chance to tell the rest you were on a night out.

There aren’t many photographs from my childhood but all of the big occasions were captured – into Farrell’s Studios in Woodquay for the First Communion souvenir shot in the suit with the short pants, the rosary beads and the prayer book, or standing in a line for a group pic when the Yanks, who had cameras, came home to visit.