I have a friend who doesn't own a camera. On her travels around the world she has made a point of not taking photographs. Or at least she doesn't take photographs with any device other than her brain, which collects and stores images enthusiastically from moment to moment. These images are never out of focus. There is never red eye. She sorts through them easily, pulling out the pictures from the folders of her mind whenever she wants to remember how it felt to stand in that place, at that time, with those people or alone.
I wish I could do that. Instead I go through phases of photography where I am either consumed by a desire to commemorate everything I see with the click of a button or, for long periods of time, just can't be bothered. There are times when I am snap happy and whole months when I take none, not with a camera and not with my brain.
I am currently going through a snap-free phase. This wasn't exactly self-imposed. It began at a wedding last month, when I gave a three-year-old our gorgeous digital camera to play with. It turns out that digital cameras are not playthings. Within seconds of him holding it, the shutter had been mangled so badly that the camera just buzzes sadly when you press the button to open it.
The three-year-old looked so innocent with his alabaster skin, blue eyes and blond curls, but underneath all that apparently beat the heart of a sumo wrestler. One minute it was in his hand, the next minute he had given it back to me with a look that said: "Excuse me, but there seems to be something wrong with your photograph-taking device. Pass the jelly snakes, would you?"
I don't deserve a working camera. For years I mistreated my photographs, dumping them in a box so that when I eventually got around to sorting them out they were unloved and in a mess, a bit like me around that time. Then, one day, I bought a pile of minimalist-looking photograph albums and began slotting in the pictures in no particular order, just to get them out of the box.
They tell no chronological story, and I like it that way. Within a few pages I travel the decades from India to Australia to France to Barcelona to Bosnia to Canada to my wedding reception in London, where I don't look too shabby, even if my hair is in a bouffant and I'm wearing too much make-up.
Anyway, in honour of my mangled camera (RIP), and because this issue of the magazine is packed with stunning photographs, I thought I would bring you the current top five - it changes all the time - photos from my own albums. They are not stunning. They have red eye and some are out of focus. But they are images that, when I am flicking through the pages, make me stop and transport me back in place and time.
1: Gay Byrne is sitting in a book shop with copies of his autobiography behind him. I am 17, and I am standing beside him with short hair and that black jacket my brother bought me in Germany. God, I loved that jacket. Gay is looking up at me and I am smiling down at him. I reckon I'm thinking
that this was definitely worth bunking off school for.
2: I am about five. I am standing outside my house with family - Rachael, Eddie, Brian, Peter - and a huge snowman with coal for eyes. Snowballs are splattered on the front wall of the house. Michael is inside, wearing pyjamas, looking through the lace curtains. Good times.
3: Mahadev is standing outside his chai shop. He has snow-white hair and not too many teeth. The sign above his shack tells you about his wares: banana lassi, papaya lassi, plain lassi, curd, chai, espress coffee, hot lemon ginger, bread with butter cream. "Whatever you want, we give!" reads the sign.
4: I am standing outside the Dakota building, in New York, on the spot where Mark Chapman killed John Lennon. I am wearing yellow sunglasses and a serious face that says a very bad thing happened here. The security guard in the gold box is about to come out and tell me to move away, but I don't know that yet.
5: My sister-in-law Rukhsana took this one. It's about 6am, and my boyfriend and I are on our way home from a yoga class in India. The sun is beginning to break through the canopy of trees above us, the pale shafts making the background look unreal, like a painting. I am holding a yoga mat and my boyfriend is holding me. This photograph is my favourite. It is peace.
roisiningle@irish-times.ie