Moments.
“Do we not trust ourselves or our memories anymore? Do we want to physically hold, take possession of the moments we’ve seen? Photography is described as the more perfect way of seeing and recalling moments, compared to the human eye and memory.”
Since publishing my website, I did not take a photograph on my camera for just over four months. I know every other photographer on YouTube and Instagram encourage taking your camera everywhere, to make photography a habit (Teo Crawford), while also encouraging to take photos for the sake of taking photos, and, remembering why it was fun in the first place (Peter McKinnon). It can be conflicting. The former is making a conscious effort to do something every chance you have, the latter reassuring that is ok to do what you want when it comes to it. I think there has to be a balance – you cannot force yourself when it comes to art – but you need to make a conscious decision to get up and do it. You need to make time to do it or pick the right time for it. This post focuses on capturing moments, replacing the human lens with an (expensive) glass one.
Delving into ‘Film and Theory: An Anthology’, (in preparation for my masters) I have come across some perspectives on photography I have never read or seen before. Film and video are very new to me – despite having a camera for 8 years. Taking a very literal, technical approach discussing photography as an origin of film, these views on photography focus on the camera’s ability to capture moments.
Moment
[noun] a very brief period of time; indefinitely short time; instant
‘Photography produced images of the world with a perfection previously rivalled only by the human eye’. From a colloquial point of view if I read this quote to anyone who has taken a photo on their camera or phone, they would most likely agree. They may follow with how taking photos preserves time, human experience. How it is an expression of the individual lives we live. In such a fast-paced world, we have become obsessed with taking videos and photos of everything that makes us feel as our memories can only hold so much. Do we not trust ourselves or our memories anymore? Do we want to physically hold, take possession of the moments we’ve seen? Photography is described as the more perfect way of seeing and recalling moments, compared to the human eye and memory. Social media plays a monumental motivation behind this; it isn’t enough to simply write things down in a diary anymore. We want to recall our moments visually, display them to others, and hold onto them as long as possible. ‘In capturing aspects of ‘life itself’ (photographs) in a ‘real’ object (the camera/lens) that can be possessed, copied, circulated and saved as the ‘currency’ of experience… [*] we are able to preserve a sense of the world and experience’s real presence.
A very literal example of this is film and polaroid. A trend among the various photographers I watch and learn from on YouTube is that at some point they go through a phase of taking photos on film/polaroid and talk about a sense of raw authenticity or anticipation evoked in the photo developing. I am yet to experience this myself (I wouldn’t even know where to start), but I assume they feel this way as photography and/or videography becomes their lifeline. I don’t mean this in a romantic sort of way, if they were to stop, their income would too. Work is work. Art is art. When the line is blurred, after some time, one must yearn for the feeling that comes from creating and sharing ART, not WORK. So, going back to the ‘origins’ of photography, and throwing yourself into personal projects to keep the flame burning seems to be the outcome.
I’ve yet to long for the ability to physically hold my photos in my hand, perhaps it is because I am too fascinated in how far I can zoom into my subjects before all I see is pixels on my screen. My form of possession differs from that of film/polaroid, it comes from the knowledge that the flowers and grass I take photos of “right now” may not be here tomorrow. They may die, they may be trampled on, they may be uprooted or mowed over. They will live on in my photos. No one else will have a photo of my subjects in the same composition or conditions as nature never repeats itself. Yes, nature is always reborn and withstands time. But I take possession of it at a certain time; the composition I noticed or created with fauna is mine through capturing it. I then edit it to evoke certain feelings rather than absolute reality. I take possession twice – once through capturing, second through editing. Knowing roughly what blooms when in a year, learning of new blossoms each year keeps me going, as there is always a new subject waiting out there for me. The whole process is comforting and ongoing. ‘The photograph freezes and preserves the homogenous and irreversible momentum of this temporal stream into the abstracted, atomised and secured space of a moment.’
The author of this essay errs conflict in shedding negative light over how a moment cannot be inhibited, and this is the cost or deficit of how a photograph freezes time into a secured space. Perhaps this is due to the perspective this essay takes, the technicalities behind filmography and videography. Looking at this “deficit” from an artistic point of view, it is actually ideal. ‘…But at what cost. A moment cannot be inhibited. It cannot entertain in the abstraction of its visible space, its single and static point of view, the presence of a lived body – and so it does not really invite the spectator into the scene, although it might invite contemplation into the scene’. As mentioned in my ‘about’ page on this website, even if you do not study arts or humanities, a natural response to viewing art is to try to learn what I saw and heard throughout my life to define the significance of each piece presented. In fact, when looking at anyone’s photos, we look for captions or something to inform us of the context of the event they portray. On a day-to-day note, online, we have ‘social media stalking’; formally, we read the little plaque next to the art or photograph at an exhibition. The fact is that the photograph will never hold the same level of significance for you as it does for the creator. If you find what you were seeking about me, the photographer, the artist, it may validate or be relatable to a similar experience you had, but it will never be the experience I had. That is the point of the archives – I have defined each collection in such a way to force you to see each photograph in a certain light. Through forcing this upon you I reject the opportunity to ‘invite’ you, the ‘spectator’, into the scene. I take advantage of what the aforementioned quote deems a cost or deficit. I am choosing to embrace the fact that my photographed moments hold a single and static point of view. You can view the scene, but you weren’t there. However, I brought focus to something you may not have noticed, so hopefully it will change you a little, you’ll look at the world slightly differently after taking it all in.
As Merleau Ponty states, To see is to have distance. I, the photographer, am in the moment, experiencing it. The photograph of the moment is liminal; it is the bridge between me, the moment, and yourself. I will recall the moment when I view the photograph, you will not. But you will feel/witness something. Art is as much an experience of the artist as it is the viewer. The photograph is the physical representation of the distance our lives will always have, no matter how much I invite you and include you into my life, my vision, my experience. No matter how much I want to evoke certain emotions from you with my art, you will inevitably impose your own while empathising with mine.
What you see is what you get.
Vivian Sobchack, ‘The Scene of the Screen: Envisioning Cinematic and Electronic “Presence”, in, Film and Theory: An Anthology, eds. Robert Stam and Toby Miller, (Blackwell Publishing, 2010) pp. 72 – 73.
[*] I have touched upon photography as a ‘currency’ in my previous post, before reading Sobchack’s essay. I did not use the term ‘currency’, I chose the term ‘language’, focusing on the concept of taking photos to share them with ones we love, and remind ourselves of time we felt love or positive emotion.