On the persistence of memories
Thoughts before starting the journey, and about what to do to remember it.
Slowness, tiredness and confusion are nouns that describe me rather well lately. Maybe it's the future, maybe it's work.
Usually the Western homo sapiens of the 21st century finds a remedy for these conditions of being in what is commonly called a holiday. And I needed one — a holiday, that is. So here I am.
Here I am, leaving for Morocco. With my trusty backpack and all my electronic trinkets. My Nikon, the most important of them, my means of expression.
I always take photographs when I travel; not for social media, but only for friends and family, to relive memories together. I have always dysfunctionally given every image a maniacal kind of care: the pose, shooting RAW, a misanthropic tendency to remove people with AI, and heavy post-processing.
My trip to Austria two years ago is a good example of days spent in Lightroom brushing over every single image. "Giving them time is what gives the memory its value", I used to say, before forgetting the photos in a nice little folder on the NAS at home. Who has the will to go looking for them and open them, with everything we have to do every day? At which point I thought: I'll put them right under my nose.
Many people put their memories under their nose by displaying them in a nice corner of the house, as framed prints or printed photo albums. In fact, plenty of online services today are more than happy to turn your folder into an album, laid out and shipped to your door.
It is an excellent solution, really, unless you love trees too much and think that using paper today is a plain waste of space, except as a backup for documents.
Then came England 2025. Immich was that fantastic tool that let me share the experience in real time with whoever I wanted. A photo gallery like the ones Google and Amazon provide, with the difference that everything stays at my house, without having to rely on the big tech company of the day and pay for an online service.
Opening an album with two clicks and seeing my memories in chronological order or on a map was exactly what I was after. Reliving the memory.
We are all different after all. And having an "England 2025" with a wall of thumbnails on a screen may not be enough to tell you "look, this is what you lived, a part of you that you have perhaps forgotten, memories, reflections and smiles you can evoke, that hold value only for you and for whoever was there with you".
Wow, evoke, I think.
Why not set the perfect photo aside. Why not make space for words, for a piece of writing. Thoughts and images together, to better understand a new culture, and how our exposure to it changes what we are. And what we travel for.
The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.
The plane has just landed. Let the adventure begin.