Photograph

A Quick Edit

Before today's wondrous post, I'd like to plug my new blog. It may be best you don't read the first and only post if you haven't read The Great Gatsby, but nonetheless, my bibliocentric new blog can be found at the pretentiously titled Fire Or Freshness. Enjoy, and pray comment if you've something to say on The Great Gatsby or subsequent books. Anyway, let's go. The following is my opinion and not a statement of fact. If you like photographs, then say some kind words in a comment or go take a few. I like photographs, but there are things I dislike about photographs.

Photograph

I've remembered what I dislike about photographs: they're too impersonal. Yes, they're very clever and I congratulate the inventors of every last piece of the current technology. You've done well. An SLR camera can take pictures that appear more real than real images. However, I quite like real images. As crisp as dewdrops on a leaf look when the focus is right, when there's incredible depth of perception and a lens several times larger than my own, it's still not a dewdrop. As Magritte astutely observed of his painting of a pipe, "ceci n'est pas un pipe." It cannot be held, cannot be stuffed, cannot be smoked. It is an image of a pipe.

Posed photographs are even worse. I've just flicked through a mental scrapbook of photographs and memories, comparing the smiles of a given person in each. The memories win. When viewing a posed photograph, with everybody staring intently into the same spot, grinning with the wrong muscles, occasionally succeeding with creasing the skin around the eyes, am I the only one who is a tiny bit afraid that these predators are about to attack me? A dozen faked friendly faces are staring at me intently, frozen in their position with far too much intensity in their gaze. A painter can at least filter out some of the oddity of a human statue; an instantaneous capture of light cannot account for the absurdity of a held pose.

An action shot is a little better, but even then, they're mostly unkind. You have a man in back of shot, midway through a change of facial expression, with distorted features akin to those of Victor Frankenstein's creature. In the foreground, a temporary hand gesture appears to be held, now abstracting that to levels of absurdity. Half-open mouths and inappropriate surprise, or a fake smile clear in the record but unnoticed at the time, all preserved for the scrutiny of men who were never there.

Holiday snaps? What are they? "Look at the fun I was having when you were driving in the rain!" Yes, except you weren't really having fun. You had time to pose for a photograph.

My protests aside, I far too often pause while viewing something incredible or looking at something beautiful just to share it with someone else, but at those moments I only further believe in what I've just said. I'm stood on the beach, looking out at across a sea lit up by a full moon and a billion stars. I can take a photograph, sure, but there's no way I can capture that beauty. I can get a close approximation.

Maybe taking an easel and a canvas to the beach with me is the solution. Perhaps a poem would better encapsulate the moment. I doubt it. At least, however, with those art forms, the masses are well aware that they're getting a snapshot, laden with the prejudice of the artist. It's curious, then, that a photograph – the most literal snapshot of them all – can so often be mistaken for a slice of reality. I have two eyes. I have depth perception. I can move my head; I can change my perspective of something in reality. A photograph is a great approximation, but it is infuriatingly nothing to do with me. The man in my memories ceases to be me about six months after the event. The man in my photographs ceases to be me instantaneously.