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In the first dimension, scenes are seen as they are. Tree is a tree, and this tree is filtered through the perspective of the first person seeing it - the invisible plane that the "tree" passes through, from real and rooted world into the perception of the tree in the mind of that person is the actual dimension. In other words, it is not the real or the perceived, but the transition from the one into the other. Person recognizes tree for a tree, admires it, and snaps a photograph. Perhaps the sky, with its puffs and wisps of cloud, adds to the scene a lovely bit of lighting that is impossible not to enjoy as a tiny little human witness on the larger, infinitely larger, majestic state of things. Eavesdropping on nature, through the filter of the first dimension: the "tree" is only coated thickly with that singular witness's syruppy enjoyment. The mere existence of this dimension is a bit hard to pin down, as it is so flat that it becomes void, and so singular to the person having the experience that it cannot be transferred from human to human. Person with camera can capture the image, and he can even print it and show it to others and provide for them their own first dimensional , but the perception, that brief implosion of all senses at once that gives him the impulse to snap the shutter and trap the setting in his frame, that unending and delicious joy belongs entirely with him to savour.
Second
The second dimension requires another person to witness the first witness. Person was anonymous while alone, but the addition of the other provides a fitting time for naming and recognizing just as the Person did when first examining the scene. Without him there is just grass, trees, sky - with him to provide names he sees Fescue, Sycamore, Cummulus. Now, with a second perceiver, we can recognize and name that first Person spying on the scene. Spencer, here with his camera, is this first dimension and it is through his initial lens that the scene first enters. He sees it, recognizes it, and captures it - a direct interaction. Adding in the second person to watch the first person watching nature - this provides another lens to filter the subject, which has since changed from "tree" to "person admiring tree", and with this subtle shift an entire world is created. I lay down on the grass and keep my camera trained on my friend as he collects his vision and composes it within his viewfinder while thinking to myself about what he might be thinking to himself about, and what he may be seeing or not seeing out there. He is crouching down low, so I imagine he wants this dried but greenish grass to be heavy in the bottom of the frame while keeping the horizon in the top third, split by a nice finger of mountain before breaking off into that staccato-clouded sky above. He pauses an instant before releasing his shutter and I wonder more about timing, and how he views this world. My perception of his perception is this second dimension and the only evidence of my existence is captured, accidentally, by the blurting and insistent pair of shoes poking out of the bottom corner of my own photographs of my friend taking his photographs. My own perception is not so much of the world out there, but more muddied - while I can appreciate the surroundings, I can't help looking at that sky without wondering how he is looking at it and bending it to his liking, and in this dimension I am bound to my friend though not to the same world that he's seen and been inspired by. He, in a sense, becomes my subject without even recognizing the shift since he is locked only to his own first dimension and unaware of this second dimension only one invisible plane behind him. (Until he turns around, of course, and smile.)Third
And, just one invisible plane behind me, of which I am unaware, comes the addition of a third axis: depth. The third dimension is where we are most at home and comfortable, and from this vantage point we can see, spatially, the entirety of a scene. Spencer and his trees, me and my friend, and now this happy surprise! Each step away from the first gets more and more narrative, and involved in the telling of the story rather than the simple capturing of an image. Inference is involved, as much so as fiction. In the second dimension, I am at a loss when I try to conjure the inkling of inspiration that lead Spencer to pick up his camera and choose this specific spot to kneel and compose his picture - all I can do is imagine it. Equally so, in the third dimension, with this new coordinate, the circle expands and it enfolds in its middle another layer of witness: Yuko. She was sitting on her blanket behind us and, for one reason or another, became somewhat captivated with what she saw: Not what Spencer saw (grass, trees, sky) and Not what I saw (Spencer, at the intersection of nature and art) but the blending of these two into a new plane which adds depth to it's width and height. It becomes a story, and it can't be told without Yuko's photograph of me photographing Spencer photographing a tree: from I to You to Him / near to far / from experience to prose.Fourth
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*Your humble writer has not devised a way into this dimension, yet, though he does wish to marvel at the symmetry here: First and Fourth are closed to us, as we are, with our incomprehensibly small little minds. We can perceive the first but never take it, and we can imagine the fourth but not quite yet enter it. Consider it the future, consider it the story to come, consider it the writing of the writing about the writing within some writing. Arlo's photo explains this quite well, and from an entirely new perspective even! From his shot you an see the entire scene laid out before you, and you can make the story up yourself. A gift, of some peculiar variety, but a gift no less. Here.
Footnote to nothing: Your ever watchful editor would also like to point out the following oddity - The first camera used, by Spencer, in that first dimension is a medium format Hasselblad, probably known as "the only true camera" and famous not only for its handmade glass lenses but also for it being the camera that was brought to the moon. These days, it requires not only a cumbersome film-loading method, but it requires great pains to even compose and click a shot, let alone the mountain of work required to develop and print it after the fact. The second camera used in the second dimension moves just one step closer to "humanity" by being a standard old 35mm "point and shoot" style camera. This means that the photographer need not even adjust focus or apeture when taking a photo - just press a button and it's all done. The third camera, used by Yuko, is even closer to what we can term "modern" because it requires no film at all and is entirely digital. The speed between taking photo and enjoying photo is increased a million-fold, when compared to the medium format or 35mm format cameras used just slightly closer to the natural world. Lastly, we have Arlo and his image which was captured by a camera-phone. The ever prevalent cellular phone has since been combined with a lens and sensor that allow it to take a photo in startling true "3 mega pixel" resolution. The journey from first dimension starts with the most cumbersome and most user-involved camera and goes down the road of technology into the most simple, most commonplace way of snapping a photo. When plotted like this, along a time line, a wonderful story begins to unfold. We just must enter this newly realized 4th (or 5th!) dimension in order to savour it.
