Photographing
The process with which one captures an instant. Closer: the process with which one captures an instant, as translated through the distorting mirrors and glass of a camera, whose paralax distorts the instant. Closer still: the process with which one flattens an experience into a rectangle of image. Even closer, still: a sham cloaked in magic.
The process with which one captures an instant. Closer: the process with which one captures an instant, as translated through the distorting mirrors and glass of a camera, whose paralax distorts the instant. Closer still: the process with which one flattens an experience into a rectangle of image. Even closer, still: a sham cloaked in magic.
In the beginning, and still to this day, a photograph is regarded as the most acceptable, true to life version of reality that a person can make. "If I hadn't have seen the photograph of the event, I would not have believed it." What this generally means is: in lieu of being there, a representational image captured by the mechanical combination of light, mirrors and film. Photograph as witness to life, what an interesting thing --- to place such heavy trust on such a shaky foundation, especially considering the course with which it is taking today given technology.
The "instant" concept is ripe for the plucking: photography used to be far from speedy, in fact it used to take almost as long to set up the camera equipment, wait for the light, compose the shot, ask the person to stand still while the exposure creeps through three or four minutes of time-space, not to mention the efforts given to processing the film and later printing it onto paper. The photographer had to draw the black hood over his head and stand behind the tiny aperture, waiting, then clicking his button --- and the space between that click and the capture was delayed further still depending on the amount of available light, the type of negatives (glass plate, metal, or otherwise) one was using. Cumbersome and bulky, which matched the equipment of the time: tripods and large format cameras needed to be lugged around by an entire support staff, and more people were needed for the finishing processes. All this work just for one print, it is hard to imagine how anyone at the time found this to be as miraculous as they did. Even more curious: if a painting is equivalent to a photograph, then the painter is equivalent to the photographer and the hands of the painter are equivalent to the camera and its lens. The removal of the human-quality, the hand-madeness of a painting, would to me seem unappealing (and without looking it up, I am quite sure that was one of the main charges against the practice in its earliest days). The trading of a person's eye and brain for a ground lens and bit of silver film: the only way humans can begin to approach Reality is by removing themselves from it and replacing where they were with a machine. In this light, the camera could be regarded as "human" because it is the product of human thinking, engineering, and imagination --- but I digress.
My own modest history with photography happens only after it was accepted as an art form all its own, with inherent qualities and a whole set of aesthetic guidelines. I was handed the heavy camera my father used during his youth (photographing the students he directed while teaching Theater at an all-girls college run by nuns in Louisiana) when I was eight and it felt good in my hands. There is something special in the "hand me down", this thing that grew a history with one person is then transported, memories and all, into the hands of a whole new person who no doubt feels the non-physical weight of the thing and smiles because of it. "This is how you focus" - hand feels for ring, twists ring until picture looks crisp... even then it was so involuntary, like the way a person spoons soup into their mouth or the way you fall asleep without telling yourself to "fall asleep". Even with these old single lens reflex cameras, one had to always compose the image by way of bringing the camera right up against one's face (the feeling of the cold metal back of the thing against the cheek, simply divine) and then squint the eye so that the only sight being taken in by the eye is that which is presented through the viewfinder. "This is how you take a photo" - finger finds button, inhale, click, exhale. And this, too, seems almost too natural for words; the body needs no command at all, the experience dictates the movement of one's fingertip. Click. Even that takes longer: one must blot out the entire outside, focus intently on a tiny pinhole of vision, wait, and in the space of a breath those mirrors do the magic.
In photo class we learned how the mechanism works: the way in which light enters the camera through the concave and convex lenses, the workings of the shutter and aperture and how they relate to the final captured image, and all these other details that all seemed to point to problems. It was a similar anxiety that I later felt traces of in Biology class during college: learning about minute details of the body's systems, the way in which blood is transported, the way in which oxygen is used, the reliance on healthy cells, it all added up to a feeling of dread - these systems must run on such small tolerances and any slight change could result in a complete failure of life. The reality and truth of a photograph seemed to be at the mercy of these little systems within the camera, and if any are out of alignment the reality would be blemished like a single dot of dust on an otherwise clean negative. I stopped trusting the camera completely, and accepted every photograph that I took as a rough draft and not the polished final copy of a True Experience, captured. Funny what knowledge does.
Always behind the curve, I used my Dad's camera well into my own college years despite the swelling tremor of digitized photography; it wasn't until my step father replaced his digital camera and gave me his old one. (Ah! This precious little gem of history's Patterning is worth pouring extra attention onto, but that's a project to be started later). The thing was one of the first on the market back in 1999 and when I received it 6 years later the buttons scared me half to death, as did the inability to control the focus. This shock is one I am sure most people felt from the sheer lack of control one has with these new(ish) devices --- why anyone would actually want trade control for convenience is beyond me. To take a photo you extend your arms and make your elbows slightly bent, hold the thing away from your face like a baby who is urinating in the middle of a cuddle session, and hope for the best. This distance seems striking in its contrast to the prior methods of taking a photo: no cold touch of the camera body against the cheek to savor, no squinting of the eye and no forcing of the brain to process only what is seen through the viewfinder, no blocking out of the world with one's eye while composing the shot. With all of this, though, we have at least gotten closer to the instantaneousness of capture that we didn't have available to us earlier.
John came up from Los Angeles recently for a visit and some bike riding and while he was here he returned to me a small grey point and shoot film camera that another friend, Kyle, had borrowed from still another friend, Spencer. Happily caught in the middle of the exchange, I agreed to take possession of the camera since John was not going to be seeing Spencer on his visit --- primarily because I wanted to help, also because it provided a reason to see Spencer myself, and lastly because it gave an opportunity to get reacquainted with an old ghost (the non-digital camera). This triple-fold smile was wonderful, and grew even more as I picked the thing up and realized it had not only been in the hands of one good friend, but made it's way to Los Angeles to be used by another good friend, and was delivered home by yet another good friend --- its heavy with the happy use of these people, and I felt honored to be able to add to it's memory-weight with my own shooting. Above are several photos from the one roll of film, the first I've had the pleasure of shooting in over five years. Holding the photos themselves in my hands last night, looking at each in succession, I was dazzled by the effect that a physical object has on a person. Even more dazzled by the rarity that is somewhat self-contained in them, the proof of an event. Something happened, I caught it on film.
Photographing is the process of capturing and collecting memories. By turning something into a still image, a frozen frame, one effectively commits it to memory much in the same way a frozen statue somehow captures an entire feeling (filled with movement, emotion, and rememberance) all in a piece of stone. Not simply a visual trigger, the thing itself actually contains part of the memory.
More here tomorrow. Stillness as memory, eyes closing as memory-intake related to shutters on camera, photo of event doubled
