aberdeen

The moment the taxi pulled up to the building, something felt familiar, but I figured it just had to do with being back in Aberdeen, which is indeed a familiar place. But inside my nose told me it was more than that. I find my sense of smell is greater than my other senses. Last February I found myself in a temple in China, where I had certainly never been before, but my nose was telling me I had. A wall plaque explained to me why- the temple’s refurbishing had been funded by Chinese in Canada, and the whole structure had been built in one particular type of Canadian Cedar from Algonquin, the same kind of Cedar as had been used to built the camp lodge I had spent four summers living in as a child, in Algonquin park. I knew that smell. The same weird feeling hit me in this lodge in Scotland, but it took my mother to explain it this time: I had stayed at that particular hotel as a child. After she pointed it out, it all fell into place and I could vaguely remember it all, but of course my memories are the fragmented memories of a child- I remember the big fat ginger cat I played with in the garden and skipping stones into the Dee…but I have no recollections at all of the building or surroundings. I stayed in so many places regularly as a child that now I can only just recall. I think it is the result of a highly mobile life that sees me in a different country nearly every week. I think this is why, even as a child I became obsessed with photography. When we were living in Cambridge (when I was about 8), my parents tried to get me to keep a diary, which I resented and hated, not least as every entry had to be written separately on notepaper and then submitted for their approval before being written in The Book. I quickly managed to get out of that duty, reassigning myself as chief family photographer. I have never managed to describe in words the sights and smells around me, and I am constantly terrified of loosing memory of places I have lived in or worked in. I photograph everything- flats, cities, people- as part of a desperate effort not to forget them. In the book The Beach, the main character goes on holiday deliberately without his camera, arguing that the obsession of some people with photography prevents them from living and thus remembering the actual experience in the moment. Maybe that fictional character has a point, and in many ways I agree with the theory. In university, I rarely took notes in class, because I felt I understood things better listening attentively without the additional distraction of writing everything down. Yet, especially on a geographic and visual level, I fear my memory is too fragile and abused to contain the amount thrown at it, so I try to capture everything on camera, hoping that when I look at it some years later, it will at least remind me of some earlier moment of my life.