You look at a photo, and it still stings. You can’t help it.
An old lover. An ex. An unresolved friendship conflict. A competition you lost. Family shit. A version of yourself you no longer recognize. A moment you can never return to. Just when you think you’ve moved on, there’s that damn photograph again, yanking you back, making you feel everything all over again.
As a photographer and writer, I talk a lot about the beauty of photography—the magic of preserving memories, the nostalgia, and the power of a single frame to transport us back to a time and place that once mattered deeply. I celebrate the joy, the warmth, and the comfort of looking back and remembering.
But let’s be honest—there’s a dark side, too.
Photographs don’t just capture what was; they remind us of what’s gone. They highlight the people who are no longer in our lives, the moments we can’t relive, the relationships that ended, and the wounds that never fully healed.
And sometimes, it hurts.
It hurts like it just happened.
Ouch.
Memories ebb and flow, washing over us like waves—sometimes gentle, sometimes crushing. One moment, you’re laughing at an old snapshot, and the next, you’re wiping away unexpected tears, blindsided by the weight of what once was.
So what do we do with that?
We lean in.
We feel it. We allow ourselves to sit with the discomfort, the ache, the grief, the longing. We don’t shove it down, pretend it’s not there, or tell ourselves we should be over it by now. Because healing isn’t about erasing the past; it’s about making peace with it.
Photography has taught me that we don’t control which memories stay and which ones fade. But we do control how we engage with them. We can choose to let them haunt us, or we can choose to honor them, learn from them, and eventually, let them go.
That doesn’t mean forgetting. It doesn’t mean pretending it didn’t matter. It means acknowledging that even painful memories hold value. They shaped us. They taught us something. They remind us of our capacity to feel deeply, to love fully, and to grow despite the pain.
So the next time a photograph stings, don’t turn away. Don’t scroll past it too quickly or shove it in a drawer, out of sight. Sit with it. Let it whisper its truth. Cry if you need to. Laugh if you can. But most of all, let it remind you that you are still here, still growing, still capable of holding both the joy and the sorrow of your past without letting it define your present.
And then, when you’re ready, take another photograph. A new one. A reminder that life moves forward. Even though some memories sting, there are always new ones waiting to be made.
There is a certain irony to a photograph. It does not hold or house emotion. The emotion lives in either the person taking the photo or the person viewing the photo. To one person, a photograph sings. To another person, that same photograph…stings. It’s just the way life is.
Click.
Jack.
