Writing for my next project in class. A Nikon DSLR.
Voyeurism
Looking at a photograph is like looking through a window. We are always on the outside. Never knowing what else is going on behind the scenes. It’s like walking down the street at night and seeing into someone’s home. Framed in like a photo. We aren’t suppose to look. That is a private space and we are to give privacy to that private space. To look in from the outside is wrong, yet we all do it. Invasion of privacy happens everyday that we leave the lights on and the curtains open. We as people invite it in, then scream in horror when some one is looking, but we play the hypocrite so well when we look in on others. We have done nothing bad if we haven’t been caught.
A picture like a window doesn’t give us the whole scene. We are not allowed to know what is going on in the margins. We don’t get to see the big picture. The image wasn’t even taken for us to see. It was taken by the artist for the artist. We should be humbled that we are even allowed to view the image that was selected for us. The artist knows what was going on, the feelings, the smells, the everything else. The things we don’t get to see.
To look at a photo in to partake in voyeurism, to look into someone else’s life, to look at something that was never truly meant for us. We are outsiders looking and engaging with something that doesn’t belong to us.
The story
Who ever said a picture is worth a thousand words was an idiot. A picture is worth a thousand questions. We get a glimpse into a story. It’s like reading the first and last sentences of a book but never reading anything in the middle. So often the world around us is framed with little questions. When you see the car that is so far away from home. What are those Hawaii plates doing sitting at the drive in theater in the middle of America? How did it even get there? Why are they here? What is their story? A photo doesn’t tell a story. It leaves you hungry for more. The image of a pregnant woman shooting up meth in Tulsa. You don’t get to experience the high that she gets. A high so good that she would put her baby in danger. It don’t get to find out if the baby lives, dies, or is forever messed up from the drugs. The picture can never explain the story of drugs hitting the brain. This is why there are more books then pictures about some topics.
But we don’t want the story. That’s why we look at the photos. We want to make up our own story. We want to see only beauty. When the background, or back story is taken away, even the ugly becomes beautiful. Photos give us a way to look at the bad. In a form we can digest. “What about the beautiful models?” one may ask. We see a cultural standard for beauty that is nice to look at. What we don’t see is the starvation, the sticking a fingerer down the throat to get rid of that cookie that was eaten, nor do we see the lines of coke or meth that suppress the appetite. We know those things are there and choose to look the other way because we want to, because we can.
Even war becomes beautiful in photos. Removing us from the blood, the stench of death. How many of use would puke in revolt if we were faced with the destruction of war? How many of us would piss our pants in battle? But the picture lets us face the ugly. It lets us see the beauty. There cannot be beauty with the pain. The photo give us humans the ability to function on the lite version of life. We don’t need, nor do we really want the whole story.
Frozen in time
A photo is a moment frozen in time. So many things from life that can’t be remembered anymore but the time from the photograph is remembered. It can be years between viewing but when I see it I remember. I can remember the sun in my face, the smell of the wind coming off the ocean. The smoke from the fire, the laughing and loving of friends. A photo isn’t just an image, there are feelings and sensations attached to it, like the time I made a waterslide in Deloris Park. The feeling of the mud and dirt coving my clothes and body.
The time I held a baby koala, his name was Leno, son of Oprah. I can still smell the eucalyptus leaves, how soft his fur was, and I see the happy grin on my face. A moment in time that will always be magical.
Time marches on but the moment that is captured in a photo will last a lifetime. We can stop time, if only in that one frame. In less then a second we can capture an entire night. Embody everything that was good, every memory we want to keep.
