Photo by me at the Laver Cup 2023 – making memories with friends
There’s a quiet intimacy in holding memory in your hands. My Fujifilm Instax camera has become a way for me to pause time, to transform fleeting moments with friends and family into fragile objects that I can touch, arrange, and carry. Unlike the endless scroll of images on a phone, each Instax print is deliberate. Film is limited (and a bit expensive), the picture develops slowly, and the print itself is singular. And by the time the image fully appears, the moment it records has already slipped into the past, leaving me with both proof and loss. This happened, and it’s gone.
I keep every print in a small photo album, a growing collection that has begun to feel like its own living archive. Flipping through its pages is different from scrolling through a phone gallery. Each print takes up space, carrying its own imperfections like a fingerprint smudge, a faded corner, a hint of overexposure. That’s why I think it’s an evocative object, one that teaches me how media hold onto time, how photos can mediate between presence and absence, and how the simplest object can become a way of thinking about what it means to remember.
To understand why these images feel so different from the thousands on my phone, I turn to media theory, which helps me see how the Instax mediates memory, materiality, and presence in ways that resist digital ephemerality.
Theory Part I – Objects & Materiality
Sherry Turkle writes that objects are “things we think with,” extensions of our inner lives that carry paradoxes into tangible form. My Instax camera has become exactly that. Every time I press the shutter, I’m reminded of what Turkle calls the way objects “extend the reach of our sympathies by bringing the world within.” This camera collapses an instant into a card I can hold, an object that forces slowness and attention in a world of infinite scroll. In the quiet ritual of waiting for an image to appear, I feel what Turkle describes in her account of Seymour Papert’s childhood gears, the way falling in love with an object can also mean falling in love with an idea. For Papert, gears opened the door to mathematics. For me, Instax prints open the door to thinking about time and how memory is always both preserved and already slipping away. Each print becomes, in Turkle’s phrase, a “partnership” that helps me live with presence and absence layered in the same frame. To hold one is to realize, as Turkle suggests, that theory itself can become an evocative object and that even in the smallest square of film, theory is brought down to earth.
Bill Brown helps me see why this matters so much especially now. He says, “materiality has come to matter with new urgency,” because we live in an era where images and information are constantly dissolving into pixels and numbers. With that context, my Instax photos feel like small rebellions. Unlike the phone gallery, where thousands of pictures blur into the endless scroll, each Instax print insists on its body. It can bend, fade, and hold the trace of a thumbprint. These so-called imperfections, in my opinion, are what make it feel alive and what Brown might call the “materiality-effect,” the way an object persuades us of its reality. Sliding a print into my album makes me realize that remembering is tactile and fragile, always mediated by surfaces, fibers, and light. Brown notes that new media often provoke a melodrama of threatened materiality as though the physical world is vanishing into code. But the Instax resists that narrative. It’s stubbornly here. A one-of-one artifact you can’t swipe away or back up to the cloud. In a time when digital photographs circulate endlessly yet somehow lose weight with every reproduction, my Instax reasserts the stubborn truth that memory is also matter.
Theory Part II – Images & Memory
W. J. T. Mitchell argues that images live in contradiction. They are, he writes, both “there and not there”material objects you can hold and spectral apparitions that summon what is absent. My Instax photos embody this paradox in the most literal way. When I watch a white square slowly darken into an image, I feel that double moment Mitchell describes: the excitement of recognition as my friend’s face or a fragment of sunlight appears, paired with the sudden awareness that the moment itself has already slipped away. Each print, I feel, is like a ghost, present enough to touch yet haunted by absence. Unlike the thousands of phone photos that blur together into a continuous stream, an Instax photo freezes the contradiction in miniature. Again, the feeling that this happened, and it’s gone.
Bernard Stiegler gives me another way of understanding what’s at stake here. He distinguishes between anamnesis (the living act of remembering) and hypomnesis (the technical supports) like writing or photography that externalize memory. The Instax makes me aware of both at once. Taking the photo is an act of attention, of choosing and framing a moment, an embodied practice of remembering. But the print that emerges becomes hypomnesis, a technical memory that lives outside me, tucked into an album. Unlike the automatic flood of digital images, though, this process feels deliberate. I decide what to keep, how to arrange the pages, what story the album tells. In Stiegler’s terms, my Instax resists the “industrial exteriorization of memory” that digital platforms often produce, where algorithms and infinite storage do the remembering for us. Instead, my album feels like a collaboration between lived memory and technical support. It’s not infinite, not perfect, definitely not optimized, and that’s what makes it special.
Thinking About Memory Now
We live in a time when most of our memories are outsourced to clouds and algorithms, where platforms decide what resurfaces for us through “memories” notifications and automated feeds. The Instax, by contrast, resists that industrial exteriorization of memory. It asks me to be deliberate, to decide what is worth holding onto and to give memory a material home. In that sense, it’s nostalgic but critical as it makes visible the stakes of how media mediate our lives.
In a way, this is a return to photography’s origins. Early cameras required patience and darkrooms producing images slowly and with effort. It feels like a strange return, a twenty-first century camera that reintroduces limits and imperfection. Maybe that’s what makes the Instax an evocative object. It reminds me that media are central forces in how we experience time, relationships, and even ourselves. And in thinking about memory now, in this moment of digital abundance and digital forgetting, we can see more clearly why theory matters as it helps us make sense of the fragile, human ways we hold on.
References
Brown, B. (2005). Materiality. In W. J. T. Mitchell & M. B. N. Hansen (Eds.), Critical terms for media studies (pp. 49–63). University of Chicago Press.
Mitchell, W. J. T. (2005). Image. In W. J. T. Mitchell & M. B. N. Hansen (Eds.), Critical terms for media studies (pp. 85–98). University of Chicago
Stiegler, B. (2005). Memory. In W. J. T. Mitchell & M. B. N. Hansen (Eds.), Critical terms for media studies (pp. 64–87). University of Chicago
Turkle, S. (2007). Evocative objects: Things we think with. MIT Press.
Blog post by Maryam Abusamak
Wonderful piece Maryam, I love the object you chose and your in-depth explanation and analysis. I really enjoyed the way that you incorporated the “resistances” of material objects in our constantly digitizing world, and how important the affordances and nuances of material things are when it come to affecting our own lives. Like you said, with the Instax the deliberate moment of capture is slowed, making you more aware of the physical limitations of material film, and the way in which it captures memory. Again, not as a digital object , but something in which you can hold and manipulate. I also especially liked your point about the “imperfections” in the film that can not only better capture the fleeting feeling of a moment, but remind us that each moment is special and unique. I wonder then, what the differences are between a more modern method of materializing film (like your Instax) vs. even older methods (such as a camera obscura)? Again, a great reflection on course themes and a wonderful choice of evocative object!
Thank you so much for your thoughtful comment, Allie! I really appreciate your reflections. : ) That’s such an interesting question. I think the Instax feels like a modern echo of older tools like the camera obscura. Both of them capture light and time in material form but I think the Instax makes that process a bit more portable and immediate while still keeping the physicality and imperfection that digital photography often loses. It’s like a continuation of that same fascination with light and memory, just maybe made smaller and more personal!
Maryam, your text is very well-structured, I loved the flow of your thoughts and how, early on in the text, it takes us from the more heart-felt attachment to a more theoretical approach. You did a great job using Brown’s theory to your advantage in this post, picking out only those concepts that relate to your exact object.
You described the moment of the picture developing very vividly and it made me reflect on the feeling of the moment having passed. I find it very interesting how the feeling of the moment being gone can sometimes (at least, in my experience) feel stronger once you take a photo, when compared to looking at it days, months, years later. Maybe it is because the fleur of what Stiegler would call a hypomnesis fades away with time?
Hi Bara! Thank you so much for your kind words and thoughtful insight! : ) I really appreciate how you noticed that shift from the personal to the theoretical, that balance was something I was trying to be intentional about. And I completely agree with what you said about the feeling of loss being strongest right after taking the photo. There’s something about that immediate awareness as you watch the image appear while knowing the moment is already gone, it feels almost haunting. And yes! I love how you connected that to Stiegler’s idea of hypomnesis fading with time. It’s a beautiful way to think about how the emotional weight of a memory changes as the image becomes more of an external artifact than a lived moment.
I really enjoyed your discussion of the theme “Holding Memory.” You wrote about using an Instax camera to transform fleeting moments into tangible memories, which reminded me of my own evocative objects: the notebooks my grandmother left behind. Like your photos, they carry the traces of time and the weight of emotion.
For me, they create two layers of memory: one that, when I flip through them, brings back heartwarming moments with my loved ones, and the other that constantly reminds me to be understanding and considerate of others. The notebooks contain the names and dosages of patients’ medications, the dates of follow-up appointments, and even small notations next to some patients’ names—indicating that their families were financially limited and she was trying to secure discounts for them.
As you mentioned, media don’t have to be high-tech digital gadgets; even ordinary objects like photos and notebooks can become vehicles of emotion and memory.
Thank you so much for sharing that, Saber! Your story about your grandmother’s notebooks is so touching ; ) it beautifully captures how ordinary objects can hold entire worlds of memory and care. I love how you described the two layers of memory they create. That really resonates with how I feel when I look through my Instax prints too. There’s the warmth of remembering the people and the moment, but also something deeper, a kind of reminder of empathy, love, and the traces people leave behind through their everyday actions. You’re so right, media doesn’t have to be digital or complex to be powerful. Sometimes the simplest, most personal objects carry the most meaning.
Your post was so beautiful I felt like I was watching a silent film as I read it Your explanation of the feeling of holding memory in your hands was so vivid that it completely captured the warmth that digital photos can’t quite convey I loved that you framed the Instax as a way to halt time showing the way that a photograph exists in a space between presence and absence. Your use of Turkle’s “things we think with” and Stiegler’s theory of memory was so thoughtful The way you linked your own experience of choosing, ordering, and holding each photo to resisting digital forgetting really moved me The idea that memory is also material seemed so powerful. Your post reminded me of how weightless scrolling through phone galleries is when compared to holding a single physical photo I also agree that imperfection and limitation are what provide memories with their life and presence. It also led me to wonder for you is taking a photo with your Instax more about capturing a moment than just recording a moment Does the act of taking it itself become part of the memory something like a ritual or a moment of reflection.
Thank you so much, Mio! Describing it as a silent film is such a beautiful way to put it, I really appreciate that. : ) I like how you picked up on the warmth and presence that physical photos hold, and how you noticed that space “between presence and absence.”
I think you’re right that the act of taking the photo itself becomes part of the memory, almost like a ritual of pausing time for a second. It’s funny how pressing the shutter and waiting for the image to appear slows everything down, making me more aware of what’s actually in front of me. Maybe that’s what makes the Instax so meaningful, beyond the photo itself, it’s the actual process of choosing to capture something at all. This makes me think that remembering can be an active, embodied act in itself.