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Photophilia is creepy

Amylea began the discussion of how bringing three bags of photography prothetics is percieved as an increase of experience and the attempt to "capture" the experience of the Indianapolis zoo.

I was hanging out with some friends Saturday night and one of them started using her laptop to take pictures of us under the guise of showing us picture (being both the photogrpahed object and the viewing subject simultaneously - heavy stuff, viewing the viewer who views).

I find it quite annoying (perhaps I've been romantically involved with too many photographers) that people would rather preserve the moment than experience it. A photograph isolates the subject of the frame from its temporal and other contexts. Increasingly, from theorizing about avatars to being completely unphotographic myself, I'm finding more and more complexity and wisdom in Ani Difranco's line "I don't take good pictures because mine is the kinda beauty that moves." It's an ideological positioning that priviledges ambiguity and the unisolatable nature of experiences which are messy and require matrixes of meaning.

Submitted by Adryan on Tue, 2007-01-30 11:57.
Adryan's blog

Creepy time space
Morgan R.'s picture
Submitted by Morgan R. on Thu, 2007-02-01 10:47.

I was just thinking about the temporality of photos.  I think often about the way that writing bends time and space, but less often about how images are doing the same thing, attempting to capture and hold still (then travel through time) a moment.  There are some young adult fiction books in which one of the main character's magic abilties is to enter into the world of a photo (hear, smell, experience the scene which is being captured).  Photos are moment ghosts.  My mom brought me a bunch of photos from a now dead estranged relative: there were pictures of dead people (litterally in a casket) and pictures of mantels filled with nick nacks.  Holding other people's memories is frightening... they emerge with only ambiguity and no experience to ground them.Mad Morgan Rackem (aka Morgan Reitmeyer)


Insert Derrida here
Amylea's picture
Submitted by Amylea on Thu, 2007-02-01 10:53.

It used to be commonplace to take photos with the deceased right before burial. After all, we still embalm them, put makeup on them, dress them in their Sunday best so that we can remember them "as they were." Why not take a photo or two? The presence is just as absent. Still, it has a creepier feel than putting up a picture of Grandma taken before death--is there some kind of presence the camera captures? Chi, perhaps?


A Very Special Pomo Comment
mark p's picture
Submitted by mark p on Thu, 2007-02-01 10:45.

I get this, but at the same time, could we say that you are privilaging your way of experiencing and trying to thurst it upon others? Maybe for others, through the lens of a camera and through documentation is a superior or more engaged form of experiencing. Perhaps you're setting up to much of a binary between experience and preservation?


Romantising (sp) the
Morgan R.'s picture
Submitted by Morgan R. on Thu, 2007-02-01 10:52.

Romantising (sp) the emphemeral?  I suppose it depends on how you think about expereince, and what you privilage as "real" experiance... But is looking at the photo of niagra falls the same as being there?Mad Morgan Rackem (aka Morgan Reitmeyer)


Pictures
Ryan's picture
Submitted by Ryan on Thu, 2007-02-01 10:42.

I agree, Amylea, that often people take too many pictures of something instead of experiencing it. It is easy to miss the Grand Canyon entirely because you're taking pictures of it. However, I like having photographs of something later, especially now that I am realizing that my memory is slowly corroding and will continue to do so. I no longer hold vividly memories I could recall a few years ago. As time passes, the general sentiment is there, but details are lost and forgotten. That's why I want pictures to reconstruct my reality for me - at least fill in some details to replace those which quietly vanish.


Remembering and Forgetting
Morgan S.'s picture
Submitted by Morgan S. on Thu, 2007-02-01 11:21.

Ryan, Amy, good points. I think it's interesting how we can access photos of an event to recall our pasts from our corroding memories. I also think it's interesting how these images can help us recall the emotions we felt at the time we first experienced them. We can remember feelings associated with people whose names we have forgotten and events we forgot we attended.

Relating this back to the relationship between the eye and the brain, I think it's particularly interesting how the brain can forget that it remembers, and then once reminded, it can recall not only the event but the emotions associated with that event.


More with that
magnoliafan's picture
Submitted by magnoliafan on Thu, 2007-02-01 10:49.

I totally agree with Ryan, and I would actually go one farther- sometimes a photograph can transform an otherwise uneventful day into something to remember more positively later.

Or even the myspace thing I was talking about- it's fun to create a really positive image of yourself and then take it apart. I think that actually enhances the quality of experience. I may be still way too into the mirror stage, though.

L-Train


You mean a picture like this?
nrivers's picture
Submitted by nrivers on Thu, 2007-02-01 11:00.

See attachment.


Exactly like that
magnoliafan's picture
Submitted by magnoliafan on Tue, 2007-02-06 10:43.

If we can learn nothing from the subtle word cues inserted by the author to indicate garfield's emotional state, surely we are not worthy visual rhetors.

L-Train