How do we interact with photos of people? I never got any of my high-school yearbooks, though I have enjoyed the very few occasions I have looked through them from my time there. I generally looked to them for reflections of my associations and accomplishments in that environment. Something along the lines of "wasn't that great of me to do that." Ze Frank proposes that perhaps we use photos to make an experience more real, that somehow a representation, regardless of how distant, gives witness in a way that experience does not. The Placebo Camera: doesn't take pictures, but makes you feel like you were there.
Read an article in Adbusters today about "Hipsters." It briefly highlighted the photographic culture within hipsterism. The blog, the "social networks." To paraphrase a line from it: if we carried stones like we carried cameras, we'd look like revolutionaries. Instead we look like...well, like hipsters. Is looking at pictures of myself in yearbooks, on facebook, on my phone, self-obsessed?
I propose that our thorough obsession with the sharing of photos is an expression of fear. If we're not in the media, we're not real. This is not an inherited fear. The project I signed up to do is directed towards providing another layer to pre-existing connections. This is the photograph of our parents. Our photograph is how we create and sustain the connection. This is dishonest. The connection is there. We've forgotten how to see it. We only know how to see the media. We have un-learned how to admit the connection.
I'm sitting writing this in front of my church with a cigarette in my mouth. I'm reminded of Sartre's Garcin, in my shirtsleeves, doing the manly work of writing. I'm connected to a tradition. It is not ironic. This very place is where I make my regular practice of outwardly admitting the connection. The photo below, however, is ironic.
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