When
should you just enjoy the moment as opposed to taking a picture of it? We have
all become Isherwood’s human camera—passively recording everything we see,
saving the images to be looked at later. I wonder if we shoot pictures for
enjoyment, to remember what we’ve done and where we’ve been, or as a compulsion,
a way to own the experience, or conversely, perhaps a way to evade it.
At
family gatherings, tourist destinations, graduations or just about anyplace or
time that’s significant, people pull out a picture-taking device and record
what they see. (For fun, when I go on vacation, I often take pictures of people
taking pictures of their experience.) As some writers on photography have
noted, it may be a way to show ownership of the experience. You take a picture
in order to share with others what you did and what you saw; it is a type of
proof of an ownership of that time and place.
But
as I learned from hauling around all my camera equipment during vacations, I am
taken out of the experiential moment when I mitigate it by photographing it. Even
in those seconds when I put camera to eye I am removing myself from the
experience of just seeing, of just being there. When I photograph something my
mind is engaged with manipulating the camera, with getting the right shot. I am
in the process of constructing a time and a place that I want to remember. All the activities involved in taking a picture
removes me from participating in what originally brought me to that spot: its
beauty, its transcendence, its serenity, its ability to relax me. Those
intangible things that I may gain by just looking and enjoying are exchanged
for the ability to document my visual perception of that place.
This
is true too of those events we attend as a matter of social interaction. When I
photograph events either as a favor or as part of my living, I find that the
camera I carry activates a kind of force field. It helps me limit interacting
at the event I’m there to document. I become involved with taking the picture
and manipulating the camera. The event itself, with all that goes on, is the
subject, to be sure, but I am uninvolved
with what goes on except to the extent that I’m recording it. Having a camera
and taking pictures makes you an outsider, an observer, not a participant. I am
there to get the best pictures of the people, the space, the interactions, the
theater of it, and so I have to be in a different psychological space from
those who are there to partake.
So,
what do you get out of taking pictures at a family gathering or during a
vacation you’ve been looking forward to? What do you bring home: proof of
ownership, or firsthand memories of a life lived?
Tell me what you think
Frame
9A
Addendum:
http://www.kodak.com/US/en/corp/kodakmoment/TravelJune2009.jhtml
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/26/business/media/26adco.html
http://www.magellans.com/store/article/440
