A shoreline photographed every year can become an argument about what a place used to be.

Photographs of the same shoreline over years become evidence, and evidence starts arguments. Once there is a record, the question of what a place used to be stops being a matter of memory and becomes contestable in a way that people find uncomfortable, especially when the change is a result of choices somebody made.

Keeping a record is one of the more powerful ordinary things you can do. Take the same picture from the same spot, of a coastline, a street, a garden, once a year. It costs a minute and produces something no recollection can. Slow changes are almost impossible to perceive without it, and almost impossible to deny with it.