How does a memory feel? Photographer debuts in Manchester with 5 answers

Saying goodbye to freshers week means endless scrolling through digital camera clicks and hundreds of variants and angles from the same night.

We try to hold on to the smallest memory, remembering feelings that cameras might fail to capture.

Remembering a Feeling

When you close your eyes to reflect on a memory, do you see images? Perhaps in fragments? Or maybe you see abstract streaks of purple and yellow in the midst of the darkness. In most cases, we capture memories through media before we resort to diving into such imaginative recollection.

Credit: Resham Vadesa @ The Mancunion

“There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences.” As Jane Austen put it, memory transcends any rules of collection, and holding onto it means attaching meaning to the tangible, otherwise losing grip on how you felt in the moment. Unless you challenge it.

In essence, capturing memory doesn’t have to be a reincarnation or recollection of past experiences. It could be documenting the reverberation of living in a moment. When was the last time you remembered the blurry rush as you stumbled across a room full of people trying to say hi to a friend? Or the nail-biting moment before addressing a room full of people?

The Exhibit

London-based photographer Abolaji Odukoya visits Manchester’s Saan1 Gallery for his debut with a collection called “Echoes of Light”, featuring five photographs created to capture the space between sight and feeling, as described by him. Climbing up the stairs in the gallery, glimpse of the contrast and the presence of these images captures your attention.

Credit: Resham Vadesa @ The Mancunion

His work strongly attests to the belief that memories are best felt, and those feelings are often difficult to capture. While crafting these images, Odukoya practiced the act that he wanted to simulate in his pictures. He recalls closing his eyes in an effort to reminisce over a memory and grasping that mental image – a collusion of abandoned precision, and “emotional imprints”. To construct the final product, he worked with movement and objects to replicate the feeling of memories rushing through your mind, and visuals lingering between the dark of closed eyes.

Credit: Resham Vadesa @ The Mancunion

These pictures nail the message about feelings that often go unnoticed, where the focus isn’t the subject but the existence of emotions around it. It could be the act of taking pictures because you fear missing out or dancing till your feet hurt; this collection of images shows another layer to our memories that goes beyond its face value.

From the Artist

“I want to create photos that make people want larger versions of them on their walls,” Odukoya jokes, but standing in front of his work, it seems only necessary to magnify these images and gaze at the photos as thoughts of the viewer oscillate between familiarity and wonder.

Credit: Resham Vadesa @ The Mancunion

In conversation with the artist, we talked about his plans about continuing this series. He hinted towards an upcoming collection compiling gloomier and the rather mellow memories. This collection explored the joyful and exciting emotions that keep you on your toes, and continuing to explore the fluctuating emotional tendencies of the human is an exciting endeavor. Keep an eye out!

Spending time with these pictures did the right thing that any art should: it left me thinking. How often is it that we try to capture moments as we wish to remember it, rather than how we feel it in the moment?