"Before the invention of photography, significant moments in the flow of our lives would be like rocks placed in a stream: impediments that demonstrated but didn’t diminish the volume of the flow and around which accrued the debris of memory, rich in sight, smell, taste, and sound. No snapshot can do what the attractive mnemonic impediment can: when we outsource that work to the camera, our ability to remember is diminished and what memories we have are impoverished."
--Sally Mann, from her memior "Hold Still"
Please check out Maria Popova's review here.
I've only just recently come across Mann's work and it's nothing short of haunting. If you look into her past she's best known for her pictures of her children growing up--work that cemented her as one of the most stark talents in American photography and garnered her as much praise as infamy.
Personally, I'm floored by her portraits, but honestly more fascinated by her landscapes. When the rural Virginian countryside is her subject, that is where I find her argument about photography being the ruin of memory to be inarguable.
And with the proliferation of everything being photographed, the idea of anything lingering in memory has been essentially replaced by the simple and often horrible digital depiction of that time and place.