I was trying to remember my grandmother's kitchen today - actually remember it, without looking at a photograph. I got the floor, green linoleum, and I got the smell, sort of. But anything I tried to focus on directly disappeared. The shape of the window. The color of the curtains. I reached for it and got the photo instead. The jpeg. Her standing by the stove, printed out and kept in a drawer somewhere, edges yellowed. That's what came up. Not the kitchen. The record of the kitchen.

I think the photos I've taken over the years have been quietly replacing the originals without telling me. Every time I looked at a photo instead of sitting with the memory, the photo got stronger and the actual experience got softer. Now I have an archive and I've lost the thing the archive was supposed to preserve. I'm afraid this is still happening. Every photo I take today is probably evicting something. Did you know you'd lose the feeling while you were busy saving the image?