by Anastasia Brown

When I was little, my family had a chunky black digital camera that we took on every trip. My mom was a liberal picture-taker, and we all knew we wouldn’t leave any vacation without at least a few dozen options for the Christmas card. Sometimes, if I spotted something particularly interesting from my vantage point three feet off the ground, I would be allowed a turn with them camera – of course, with my mom close behind me, holding her breath in fear that I would drop it. This fear was so deep, half the time when I would ask to use the camera she would sigh and ask, “Sweetie, how about you point out what you want in the picture, and then I will take it for you?” Usually this wouldn’t quite do, and despite her best efforts she couldn’t quite match my seven-year-old artistic vision.

And so she created a mantra: “How about you take that picture in your mind?” Maybe the idea spawned from a nervous fear of the camera being dropped on the sidewalk, but quickly “pictures in our minds” became a frequent phrase in the family. There were ritual practices to go along with the words – you had to become very quiet, focusing your sight on just the rectangular piece of the landscape which you wished to photograph, and try to absorb as much of the depth and detail and richness that you possibly could. Once you thought you had it, you tightly closed your eyes to test your memory – could you still remember the scene? If it was a blurry shot, you had to take it
again, focus on the scene with a rekindled eagerness.

A picture in my mind – it didn’t initially feel as special as getting to use the camera, but I grew to love the idea. Even now, long after the digital camera has been retired, the idea pops into my mind from time to time. Especially when the camera on my phone is proving to be a disappointment, failing to properly capture the light and colours of the scene before me, I return to the old ritual – etching the moment into my mind with all the vividness that I possibly can.

Now unfortunately, the great downside of pictures in my mind is their utter inability to be Instagrammed. And of course, that leads to the perennial question – if you don’t post the photos, did you even actually do the thing? My mind pictures are, tragically, selfishly, only for me.

Or perhaps that is part of their continuing enchantment to me. I can close my eyes and immediately see the view from the Theology balcony in the library, when the golden sun was slanting across the floor below me, illuminating the spines of books and casting deep shadows where the shelves blocked the paths of the rays. I can shuffle through images to an earlier moment in the term, when the flowers in the beds of first quad were so vibrant, dancing in a light breeze, that I suddenly understood the scene in Through the Looking Glass when Lewis Carroll describes Alice as stumbling upon a garden of live flowers, each with a voice and personality. I can continue perusing images until I find my favorite from this Michaelmas Term – a moment in the chapel, sitting in the corner near the door, half planning to slip out early from Evensong because of the looming weight of unfinished reading. I was arrested by the way the candlelight illuminated the faces of the choir and the shadowy faces in the stained glass that loomed above them. That mental picture seems to carry with it the weight of centuries.

Maybe if I was just a better photographer, or if I knew better how to use a watercolour palette, I would have no need of this little practice. Or maybe the pictures in my mind carry with them a special potency distinct from pulling out my phone and taking a picture. I can’t help wondering if my mental ritual of picture-taking has been practiced through the ages by those who have no other way to capture the beauty that we can find in every corner. I hope so.