That was in 2016 and I was really rather proud of them. Over the years I’ve used them in many ways and to my hugely biased eye they have remained timeless. However, at a crime writing festival earlier in the year, somebody, with no hint of malice, told me that they didn’t recognise me from my festival programme photo and thought I was somebody else. What they were actually saying, but were too polite, was that I was kidding myself that these nine-year-old images represented anything but a bygone memory.
So I took the hint and arranged for a local professional photographer Dani Brown to spend a morning last week taking a new portfolio of author photos, restoring my dignity in the process. Given that I was looking for something more up to date, it seemed incongruous that Dani should announce she would be using old fashioned film, not digital photography for the session. She provided many artistic reasons for doing so and said that this was becoming the trend amongst photographers these days as digital was found to have limitations. This seemed reasonable and so the session started.
I’ve forgotten a lot about old fashioned photography not least the genuine shutter release click, the whirring of the camera wheels after each picture and the fact that there are a finite number of images on each reel. One thing however really struck me, but should have been obvious, was that I was not able to look at the images at the time. I’d unexpectedly been thrust back to a world where everything was less immediate and patience was not only a desirable, but necessary quality.
Not being able to see the pictures, and at the time of writing this I still have not, was strangely liberating and made me question whether having so much instantly accessible at our fingertips is such a good thing. We have read recently about schools banning mobile phones in the classroom so pupils can focus, and whether or not such measures are a good or bad thing. Opinion is split and I’m not going to enter that debate, but there is something quite grounding by being in the moment and not expecting everything to be immediately delivered. I am probably one of the worst people to advocate this more pedestrian and serene way of living as I am constantly within arm’s length of my phone checking to see whether my WhatsApps had been read and answered, looking for new emails or even checking my social media. But when forced away from such habits a wave of serenity quickly washes over me.
I recently wrote about my wife and I going to the Clink Restaurant in Brixton Prison. One of the things that I did not cover in that article was that we could not take our phones with us. Neither of us thought this was a big deal, until the first dish was brought to our table. It was then that we both reached for our mobiles to record and share it for posterity. It was then we remembered that they were safely stowed in a locker the other side of security. We laughed at what we’d become; people deep in the habit of photographing their food and then sending it to, in our case, our grown-up children. Instead, we relaxed into the experience content to tell others about it later. Just like in the old days.
Access to urgent information and being able to contact and be contacted in an emergency are just two of the very obvious benefits of having communication at our fingertips. But sometimes life is passing us by if our default position is to scrutinise and retake photographs time and again, watch a gig or concert through the lens of our phones or seek appreciation of our menu choices rather than just living in and enjoying the here and now for all it can offer. I for one will make more effort to switch off. Only time will tell whether I succeed.
Former Brighton and Hove police chief Graham Bartlett’s Brighton-based Jo Howe crime novel series continues with City on Fire which is now available in paperback.
