Across Ireland this week parents will gather at school gates armed with smartphones. There will be photographs by front doors in freshly pressed uniforms and photographs outside school gates. Some parents may even record the occasion on video, determined to preserve every detail of a milestone that feels too important to forget.

It is an understandable impulse. More than perhaps any generation before us, we are trying to capture family life as it happens. We photograph birthdays, holidays, graduations and ordinary Tuesday afternoons, building big digital archives in the hope the moments that matter can somehow be kept intact.

Yet there is an irony at the heart of this effort. The photographs we take to preserve memories may ultimately help shape them. Years from now, the image outside the school gate may become inseparable from what both parent and child remember about that first day.

Ask a room full of adults about their first day at school and many will have a story ready to tell. They remember the teacher, the classroom, the excitement and perhaps even the tears. Parents may have an equally vivid story about dropping a child off for the first time: the oversized jumper and the last-minute panic at the gate. These memories can feel vivid and certain. Yet both are likely to change over time.

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