Lately I have been paying more attention to the way meaning moves between people, or sometimes refuses to. There are moments when someone tells me something they found beautiful or important, and I realise, almost immediately, that whatever they felt is not going to reach me in the same way. It is a small quiet distance, but I notice it more these days, this gap between what something meant to them and what it manages to become inside me.
One place I notice this is how often people show me their photos as if the act of taking a picture is enough to guarantee that I will feel something, as if sharing an image automatically creates a connection between our experiences. It never works like that for me. I do not mind photos. I take plenty. I even share them when they feel right. Quiet Frames exists for a reason. But the things that catch my eye are usually small or uneven or shaped by a feeling that is hard to explain, and I think that is where the difference starts. My photos are attempts to pin down a mood or a slant of light or a moment that would have disappeared without a trace if I had not paused long enough to see it. Other people’s photos often feel like records of what they think they were supposed to enjoy, as if the act of recording something is already half the performance.
It is not wrong. It is just a different way of paying attention.
Most of the time someone hands me their phone and starts scrolling through dozens of pictures, almost all of them versions of a moment that probably mattered a great deal to them but has no real place inside me. A long string of meals. A hotel room that looks like many hotel rooms. A beach that could be anywhere. They talk while they scroll, pointing out details I am not sure I am meant to understand, and I stand there trying to keep up even though my interest slips almost immediately. I never know how much enthusiasm I am meant to show, and I suspect that lack of certainty reads as a kind of reluctance, even though it is nothing of the sort. I just do not feel anything from most of the things people choose to record.
I notice the same thing with the statements people post online, that pretend to be thoughtful without ever landing on anything real. There is a kind of rehearsed seriousness to them, as if they are performing the idea of depth rather than doing any thinking at all. I see it a lot. People talk around feeling so they can look as if they have spent time examining it. It is intellectual performance wearing the costume of philosophy, and once you see it you cannot unsee it, although I try not to dwell on it for too long because it makes everything feel slightly hollow.
I think that is the part people never see. They imagine that because I take photos, I must be invested in the same things they are. But content matters. The moment behind the image matters. I do not care if someone had a meal or went on a weekend away or sat in a bar with friends I do not know. That is not the kind of thing that reaches me. I connect to atmosphere more than events, to the quiet logic of a scene rather than the social meaning attached to it. A photograph of light falling across a surface tells me more than a posed memory ever will. A picture of a field with weather moving through it tells me more than a gallery of views from a balcony.
This is not something I can explain easily. When people show me their photos, they are offering pieces of their lives they believe matter. They want me to see what they saw. They want me to feel something close to what they felt. And I do try, but the truth is my mind does not work that way. It skims over the obvious and gravitates toward the things no one thinks to point out. Sometimes I catch myself studying the background of their photo rather than the subject. The edges of things. The parts they did not mean to record. That is often where the honesty is.
There was a day a while back when someone had taken an entire sequence of pictures at a place they clearly loved. They spoke about how much it meant, how beautiful it was, how much I would appreciate it too. I watched politely while something in me stayed still. Later that evening, I opened my own camera roll and found a photo of a damp bench under fading light that carried more truth for me than anything I had been shown that afternoon. There was no comparison. One meant something only because it did. The other was trying to mean something, and that is never the same.
Sometimes people assume I am being dismissive because I do not react the way they expect. It is not that. I do not think my way is better. It is simply how my attention has always worked. I have space for the quiet things, the unnoticed things, the bits of a moment that do not ask to be shared. But the curated fragments of other people’s lives, arranged and presented with an energy I cannot echo, slip through me before I have even finished looking.
I do not say any of this out loud because it would sound harsher than it feels. There is no judgement behind it. I am glad when people enjoy their day trips and holidays. I am glad when something makes them lift their phone because they wanted to keep it. I just do not feel what they feel when I look at it. The meaning does not make the jump from them to me.
So I do what I always do. I look. I say something kind. I hand the phone back. Then I let the moment pass, and sometimes I think that is the most honest reaction I can offer.
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Header Photo by Se. Tsuchiya on Unsplash