Rediscovering the Joy of Photo Albums with Super Mario Odyssey and the Nintendo Switch
All photographs by Sarah Clark
Do you remember photo albums? We don’t see them much at all anymore, not the way we used to. Our lives have largely eclipsed the era of physical media, and because of that our photos live in the cloud, on our phones, at the whim of corporate interest. Most regularly, I share my photographs on instagram, twitter, or a handful of websites. And while there is a boutique interest in analog media—vinyl pressings of albums recorded entirely through digital means, amateur and fine art photographers who pride themselves on shooting film and making prints, scrapbook hobbyists—our lives are collected digitally and kept transient. A flowing river of content.
But I love photo albums. The big bindings, the creaky backing paper and the crackle of cellophane cover sheets. But mostly the feeling of someone sitting next to you guiding you through their travels and memories. It’s a matter of format, but also orientation, a specific context.
There’s a focusing quality to holding an album in your hands, like the way church vestibules are designed to impress a sense of stillness and quiet, that prepares you for the sensorial and mnemonic journey you’re about to engage in.
And while the Nintendo Switch may seem like just a small tablet or oversized phone, it commands a different emotional and semiotic space. It’s something I realized playing Breath of the Wild with the Switch pressed up against my face like a viewfinder. But when my partner loaded up their photos from Super Mario Odyssey, I came to realize there was another way this device could change our standard ways of interacting with a console, the games we played, and memories we forged and shared. They handed me the console, curled next to me on the sofa, and guided me, image by image, through their journey. The Nintendo Switch can make a surprising analog to the traditional photo album, it turns out.
I haven’t played more than an hour or two of Odyssey. I dislike the Joycons, the movement controls that restrict certain actions when undocked or using the Pro Controller, the way Mario glides and bounces around like a hyperactive, off-balance, melting aspic. I could have brute forced my way through it, gathering just enough Moons to unlock the next section of gameplay, observed Bowser’s doomed non-consensual wedding, and Peach saying “Fuck all of this, I’m out.” I could have, but I wouldn’t have enjoyed it.
