Manufactured Recollection
But as a result, I am remembering much of my life through the algorithmic frameworks of these third-party companies. Consequently, we view photographs not merely as relatively rare artifacts capturing particularly significant moments but as prosthetic extensions of ourselves and our interior lives. When algorithms intervene in how and when we interact with our photographs, they secure a deeply emotional inroad to our identity-forming practices. These images and the way they are algorithmically organized don’t merely remind us of the past; they help shape how we think of ourselves in the present and how we might think to document our lives and articulate ourselves in the future. — making us audiences of ourselves as the algorithms piece together our “best” stories for us. But “Memories” features rewire relationships in such a way that makes commercial platforms indispensable mediators. memories become susceptible to being evaluated according to performance metrics. we must ask what memories are left on the outskirts. What experiences are illegible to or unvalued by a commercial system? What does it mean for our subjectivities at large that we are all building our memories around same scaffolding? Over four decades ago, Susan Sontag posited that photography enables “an aesthetic consumerism to which everyone is now addicted.” As a multiplier of photography’s influence, algorithmically fueled “Memories” features bring us deeper into a supercharged aesthetic consumerism that shapes our personal narratives along the lines of influencer culture.