Frozen time

Alan Watts in his “The Wisdom of Insecurity” explains that we, as humans, cannot  really compare any two experiences, because one and only one experience can occur at any given moment, and we cannot rapidly shift our attention to a prior experience – only to a memory of it, which is not the same thing (“A menu is very useful, but it is no substitute for the dinner.”)

Photography, in fact, facilitates this rapid switch between the memories, which are frozen in images. Because, as Watts explains, we tend to think about a memory of an event as if it was the event itself, photography can actually alter our subjective experiences in retrospect. This is why eyewitness accounts are not considered to be definitive evidence in courts – the memories of the witnesses can be affected by the information acquired a posteriori.