I have 31,598 photos on my phone and I don't want to delete them.

The oldest photo isn't even mine. It appeared on an inherited iPhone. There's my grandparents' house, the old marble sink, my father making pota coffee... How could I possibly delete it ? Then 31,597 more arrived in the camera roll. All my friends have thousands of images; I have close ones that reach 100,000 . I'm sure you also save more than you think. You probably just paused reading to see how many.

Why do we store so many photos? Why do we feel unable to delete them?

The world moves so fast , and saving a snapshot seems like the only way to preserve that moment. I began to think about this while reading a reflection on other people's photos: "The old pedestrian way of seeing the world, which allowed us to walk around a subject, study it, and compare it, seems to have succumbed to technological progress . What we see of the world comes to us as a succession of fleeting, kaleidoscopic visions, unconnected, inexplicable, and unfulfilled."

It was written by the director of photography at MoMA in 1968 —yes, 1968—when the New York museum organized an exhibition by Joel Meyerowitz (currently at PHotoEspaña ). Joel had been awarded a scholarship and set off with his wife for Europe. Over the course of a year, he traveled by car through ten countries. He took 30,000 kilometers, 25,000 photos , many of them from the moving car itself. Parisian schoolchildren, German bathers, a parishioner from Malaga...

" Cartier-Bresson said that photographers deal with things that are constantly vanishing . They do it more quickly now than before. He also said that there was no device that could bring them back, except photography," the MoMA text continues.

Today, everything vanishes faster than it did in the 1960s. We rely on snapshots more than our memories. We need things that make us feel secure in these fluid times we live in, says Bauman . And there they are: the comforting images. Photos of dishes we ate, concerts we saw, friends we hugged.

Despite my 31,598 photos, I don't have a single one of one of the most magical moments I've experienced while traveling. It was at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. Back then, cell phones had buttons and cameras had film. I don't know if it's so special because it will be difficult to return to Russia, because we didn't yet live in a constant attention crunch, or because I only have memories. I can't even visualize the painting that moved me the most. I know it was a Rembrandt , I know that light... I know I'm sad not to have any photos.