Catherine Plunkett was six years old
when the very first photograph was taken.
She died in 1932 at the age of 111,
which makes her the last known human to have had memories
of witnessing reality before it could be photographed.
But what does that mean? Before photography,
there were plenty of other art forms
that could visually remember what happened. Painting,
drawing, sculpture.
You know, in a way, though,
those are more like play actors dressed up like what happened.
A photograph is. Is like a ghost.
It stole something from reality.
Now, photographs are not entirely objective.
Someone has to decide where to put the camera,
when to take the shot.
But a photograph can feel more like a fingerprint
and less like a story.
But Catherine Plunkett may have been the last person
to have come from a world of just those stories
and living memory. After her,
and ever since, machines have changed how we remember.
But the way they remember,
the ghosts they create, they age and die very differently than we do.