Photos, memories and longing: the curse of the iPhone’s algorithm

Thank you to everyone who emailed or submitted a comment on last's week essay about their own childhood fear of the dark, and their own particular and creative way to handle that fear. I chuckled, I empathized, I loved knowing I was not alone in this very specific young-child fear... Memories of a different kind this week. 

The view across Lake Winnipeg from Clifftop Cottage

I have a love-hate relationship with my iPhone’s ‘photo memory’ feature. It shows me pictures from my camera roll, popping them onto my screen in a pattern known only to its own algorithm. I enjoy the ones of my late mother, to each of which I respond, Oh hello there, Mum. Good to see you. But when the phone selects one of the zillions of photos I took at the cottage, I am annoyed. They are lovely photos of a lovely spot, but having the picture appear unbidden always, every single time, reminds me of what I no longer have access to. 

Selling the cottage was necessary, and selling the cottage changed how we live. We gave up so much more than just a structure on a piece of land, we gave up a way of life with nature at its heart. It came with an amazing view over Lake Winnipeg; a public reserve next door where deer wandered, birds sang and foxes marauded; and space in which to breathe deeply. In short, we gave up the luxury of doorstep-close nature in the wild. 

Had I known when we bought this second cottage what I now know about the deep delights of living so close to nature, I wonder if we would have chosen differently. I wonder if we might have sold the city house, sold the first cottage, and combined the proceeds to buy a new home on a piece of land, maybe several acres, outside the city. My fantasy says it would have been grand; the reality might have been different. I’ll never know. While I loved every minute of the 15 years we owned Clifftop Cottage, on a not-so-good day in the city, I regret the choice we made in buying it back then, regret we did not explore a different option.

Maybe this explains why I don’t have photos of the cottage displayed on every surface in our city house. The cottage was then. Our small urban home is now. The acres of land have never been. Living in the longing of being where I can no longer be, will never be again, is not useful for me. And every photo-memory of the lake view and our cottage life makes me re-know this in an unexpected moment when it shows up unbidden on my screen. So, I swipe across and carry on with my city day.

Photos can trigger many different kinds of memories — welcome, painful, annoying, unwanted. I take a zillion photos with my iPhone, but I want to choose when to look at them. When my memory is jogged unbidden and the resulting feeling is unwanted, it takes me aback rather than down a happily nostalgic lane.

The internet tells me I can turn off the photo memory feature, and maybe I’ll do that, though I probably won’t. I’ll put up with the occasional unexpected cottage memory for the occasional joyful one when it’s my mother who pops onto my screen. On balance, she makes up for everything.

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Land acknowledgement: I respectfully recognize that I live on the original lands of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.