Cloud Memories and Algorithmic Recall
What happens when we make more photographs than we can live with - when most frames feel futile, yet a few matter intensely?
The Inquiry
This study examines how photographic excess, cloud platforms and AI sorting shape memory, care and ownership. Working from a long-running personal archive of more than 180,000 images, I analyse selected photographs across time and place and co-view phone and iCloud archives with others to understand what people keep, delete, hide or share. Images, metadata and platform resurfacing events - such as Memories, face clustering and search prompts - become material for understanding how platforms participate in remembering. The recurring patterns include overwhelm from volume, a small number of anchor images that carry disproportionate meaning, algorithmic resurfacing that edits what feels salient, and uncertainty around consent once photographs circulate through backups, shared albums and AI-indexed faces.
Outcome
Accepted as a poster in the Science, Technology & Digital Studies stream at the British Sociological Association Annual Conference 2026. A related 2025 installation, “I thought I will forget you that night”, materialised more than 80,000 iCloud images as a one-metre-square archive.
