Documenting Our Lives: “A Love Letter to the Ones Behind the Lens”

By Ramadhan Karali

We’re always there, behind the lens. Watching life unfold in front of us. Framing it. Capturing it. Preserving it. We give light and shape to other people’s memories. We freeze time so they can look back years from now and remember what their joy looked like, what their love felt like, what their laughter sounded like. We are the silent witnesses to the most beautiful, chaotic, intimate, and fleeting moments of others.

And somewhere along the way, we forget to do the same for ourselves.

We forget to turn the camera around.

This is something that’s been tugging at me for a while now. A slow, creeping realization that I, too, deserve to be seen. Not just by others but by myself. I’m starting to notice how easy it is to hide behind the lens, to always be the one capturing the beauty instead of living in it. Or worse, not seeing the beauty in our own ordinary days.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about this. Maybe it’s the scrolls I take through Instagram, watching the “girlies” post their monthly recaps: a chaotic laugh here, a soft-filtered sunset there, a short video of their coffee, a blurry club night, a random solo walk with headphones on. Just pieces of life. Their life. And there’s something so gentle and brave about that. They romanticize their existence with pride. They post like they matter, because they do.

I always envied that.

Me? I’ve always had this little voice in my head, the self-doubt kind that whispers, “You’re doing too much.” That uneasy feeling when I think about pointing the camera toward myself. I could tell a whole visual story of a city, a family, or a stranger’s eyes in perfect detail. But my own moments? My own smile? My own little wins or losses? I often let those pass undocumented. Just like that. Gone.

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if I photographed myself the way I photograph others, with patience, with admiration, with the intention of preserving something sacred. What if I paused to capture my own joy, my own solitude, my own messy, glorious, ordinary life?

I think that’s the heartbreak of it, that we, the documenters, become footnotes in everyone else’s story. We’re there, but not really. Present, but fading. And yet, we matter too. Our moments deserve light.

Damian Conway once said, “Documentation is a love letter to your future self.” I’ve been sitting with that quote for a while now. It made me realize how I’ve been robbing my future self of memories, not big achievements or milestone events, but the quiet beauty of just being.

I’ve started paying attention to my own life more intentionally. I now keep a daily journal, just a few lines each day, sometimes messy, sometimes poetic, always real. It’s a record of what I’m feeling, what I’m going through, what’s changing. And alongside the words, I’ve started taking more photos. Not for Instagram. Not for anyone. Just for me. My feet on the pavement during a morning walk. My hand holding a glass of water after a workout. A shadow on my wall. A video of me laughing at something silly. Nothing posed. Just proof. Evidence that I’m here. That I exist beyond the art I make for others.

(Picture of dinner I have lately during a solo outing)

I think we often fall into the trap of thinking we need a “moment” to document something. A celebration. An achievement. A new outfit. A milestone. But life doesn’t only happen in the loud, spectacular moments. It happens in the quiet ones too. In the in-betweens. And that’s what makes it so worth remembering.

I’m learning that documentation is not vanity. It’s care. It’s gratitude. It’s preservation. It’s saying to your future self, “Look, you were here. You made it through this. You were soft, strong, silly, trying. You were alive.”

And I want to keep that love letter going. I want to show up for myself not just in how I look, but in how I live. The food I cooked. The early morning light. The joy I felt when I danced alone in my room. The nervousness before a meeting. The peace of finishing a book. The discipline of choosing a healthier habit. The heaviness of some days. The delight of others.

(Picture of me drinking tea, a recent Hike at Port victoria, Busia county, Kenya)

I want to remember me, not just the things I’ve seen.

To all my fellow photographers, maybe it’s time we remembered that we don’t always have to stay behind the camera. That our own lives are not side notes. That we, too, are worthy of being captured in all our angles, even the unflattering, even the unfiltered. That we can romanticize our lives without apology. That there’s no such thing as “too much” when it comes to celebrating your own existence.

So, start the recap. Make that video. Take that photo. Keep that journal. Film that moment. Even if no one else sees it, you will. And that’s enough.

"You are part of the story."

You are not just the storyteller.

You are part of the story.

Let yourself be seen. Let your life be remembered.

Frame it.

Save it.

Celebrate it.

Because you’re here. And that is everything.