My Facebook page is awash with unremarkable images of conventionality: new babies, weddings, beloved pets, children on the beach, families skiing, gatherings, nights out, concerts, gardens, home improvements and hobbies. The vast majority of these I am not in. Some of these I have felt compelled to add to but most are produced by an online collection of individuals who may or may not be networked to each other and most likely have not been connected to me in the real world for quite some time. They are ‘dormant memories’ as Hoskins describes them (2010). Ceaselessly streaming this data of ordinariness, I am astonished by the repetition of memorable experiences across a diverse network of ‘friends’ from different backgrounds, many of whom have never met each other.

What I do not notice is that the sense of ‘loss’ and ‘longing’ that Annette Kuhn (2002) isolated when analysing the studio portraits and family photograph albums of her own childhood is missing. ‘Why should a moment be recorded’, asks Kuhn, ‘if not for its evanescence?’ (Kuhn 2002: 49). Yet the ubiquity of mobile phone and digital camera images and their multiple displays on my computer screen, taggable and shareable, does not suggest loss at all. The photography no longer seizes a moment as if it has only that one chance to capture it. For Kuhn (2002), these practices in the past involved the careful and detailed production of well-chosen photographs from expensively developed equipment, lovingly and with great skill placed and preserved in an often beautifully presented bound album or framed for display. Now, the family album is carried around in our pocket instantly accessible any time, any place, anywhere. But is it a family album? Is it even an album?