Tool: Screenshot

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Even if my screenshots don’t make my boring pictures better, they make them mine. Screenshots are snapshots of interior life
From public-facing celebrity Notes app apologies to clandestine copies of images that were otherwise designed to disappear, screenshots are the candid camera of the internet. They can be used in service of truth and transparency, revealing ugly behavior online, but they can also be fun and familiar, reminders of conversations and memes not otherwise archived in memory.
Though taken haphazardly, these screenshots are far more revealing of my lived experience than any clichéd snapshot; they are the subconscious of my camera roll.
Some of these moments aligned with the old adage that photographs make memories, but others seemed to mirror the photographer Garry Winogrand’s stated motivation: “I photograph to see what the world looks like in photographs.”
Susan Sontag has suggested that “photographs may be more memorable than moving images, because they are a neat slice of time. Television is a stream of under-selected images, each of which cancels its predecessor. A still photograph is a privileged moment, turned into a slim object that one can keep and look at again.” Anyone who’s ever opened an app with intention (to look something up, I swear), only to find herself lost at sea as soon as the scrolling begins, knows that every image on the internet “cancels its predecessor.” The screenshot is one modest way to stem the tide.

title: “Tool: Screenshot” author: Kim Beil url: https://believermag.com/tool-screenshot-kim-beil/ date: 2022-02-15 source: pocket tags: media/articles

rw-book-cover

Even if my screenshots don’t make my boring pictures better, they make them mine. Screenshots are snapshots of interior life
From public-facing celebrity Notes app apologies to clandestine copies of images that were otherwise designed to disappear, screenshots are the candid camera of the internet. They can be used in service of truth and transparency, revealing ugly behavior online, but they can also be fun and familiar, reminders of conversations and memes not otherwise archived in memory.
Though taken haphazardly, these screenshots are far more revealing of my lived experience than any clichéd snapshot; they are the subconscious of my camera roll.
Some of these moments aligned with the old adage that photographs make memories, but others seemed to mirror the photographer Garry Winogrand’s stated motivation: “I photograph to see what the world looks like in photographs.”
Susan Sontag has suggested that “photographs may be more memorable than moving images, because they are a neat slice of time. Television is a stream of under-selected images, each of which cancels its predecessor. A still photograph is a privileged moment, turned into a slim object that one can keep and look at again.” Anyone who’s ever opened an app with intention (to look something up, I swear), only to find herself lost at sea as soon as the scrolling begins, knows that every image on the internet “cancels its predecessor.” The screenshot is one modest way to stem the tide.

rw-book-cover

Even if my screenshots don’t make my boring pictures better, they make them mine. Screenshots are snapshots of interior life
From public-facing celebrity Notes app apologies to clandestine copies of images that were otherwise designed to disappear, screenshots are the candid camera of the internet. They can be used in service of truth and transparency, revealing ugly behavior online, but they can also be fun and familiar, reminders of conversations and memes not otherwise archived in memory.
Though taken haphazardly, these screenshots are far more revealing of my lived experience than any clichéd snapshot; they are the subconscious of my camera roll.
Some of these moments aligned with the old adage that photographs make memories, but others seemed to mirror the photographer Garry Winogrand’s stated motivation: “I photograph to see what the world looks like in photographs.”
Susan Sontag has suggested that “photographs may be more memorable than moving images, because they are a neat slice of time. Television is a stream of under-selected images, each of which cancels its predecessor. A still photograph is a privileged moment, turned into a slim object that one can keep and look at again.” Anyone who’s ever opened an app with intention (to look something up, I swear), only to find herself lost at sea as soon as the scrolling begins, knows that every image on the internet “cancels its predecessor.” The screenshot is one modest way to stem the tide.