Photography: Constructing a Life

I'm merely a hobbyist, an enthusiast, an amateur with a passion for photography. I like to take pictures. I enjoy the experience. 

I took a fair amount of pictures this year.

My background is in philosophy, a discipline that has contributed much by way of thinking through the art and ontology of photography. Yet, philosophy often feels disconnected from the practicalities of actually taking a picture, removed from the motivations of the ordinary and the everyday.

Photography lends itself well to the commonplace. 

In his journals, Andy Warhol, one of the first to truly democratize photography and address what it means to take a photograph, speaks of the prosaic nature of photography when he writes, "I didn't believe in art. I believed in photography." 

Photography levels the field of art.

In thinking about the nature of photography, I often consider the similarities between a professional photographer and an amateur, wondering if there's any difference at all.

On the one hand, I relish the chance to talk with professional photographers, to learn their craft. Part of me seizes upon the conversations that center around cameras, lenses, and film stock. More than anything, I like to try to adopt their perspective, striving to see the world through their eyes. I'm energized by their passion and conviction, no less than their proficiencies. Through practice, dedication and experimentation, professional photographers diligently work to hone their profession.  

On the other hand, I'm equally inspired by the everyday photographer, the casual photo taker, the one who carries an iPhone. I'm always reaching to better understand their sensibilities, their willingness and desire to take a photograph, at birthday parties and baby showers, at sunrises and sunsets. When the mood to take a picture strikes, I'm captivated by the motivations and, ultimately, everything else that ensues.

I'm reminded of Roland Barthes' remarks on the amateur:

"Usually the amateur is defined as an immature state of the artist: someone who cannot - or will not - achieve the mastery of a profession. But in the field of photographic practice, it is the amateur, on the contrary, who is the assumption of the professional: for it is he who stands closer to the noeme of photography."

Leave it to the philosopher to use big words while imparting a relatively simple concept: We are all photographers, seeking to document, capture or archive, memories, events, and landscapes. There's no distinction between the amateur and the professional. If anything, it's the amateur that drives the medium forward, pushing the limits. The polaroids of Andy Warhol exhibit this in spades.

The old maxim that the best camera is the one you have with you has never been more true. Annie Leibovitz speaks convincingly of this capacity to capture-the-moment, describing how opportunity demands spontaneity. Use whatever is at hand, she says, so as not to miss the moment. With the advent of the smartphone, and the increasingly sophisticated camera technology, everyone now carries a picture-maker in their pockets. 

There's so much at play in taking a simple photograph: the light, the composition, the subject matter, and, of course, the dance with time.  

For most of us, none of the technicality of taking a picture comes to mind. Even Henri Cartier-Bresson, the esteemed French photographer and pioneer of street photography, set his camera settings so as to minimize the need to make on-the-fly adjustments. He simply wanted to capture , what he called, the "decisive moment". He used his camera as a tool, an extension of his body-eye.  

Opening ourselves to the moment requires removing ourselves from the moment. 

I notice the light as it reflects off the surface of the ocean at sunrise. I am drawn to a particular object that calls to my attention. I see an unmistakable smile. I rush across the street in the middle of city traffic to document a man who looks like Colonel Sanders. 

Something compels me to mark the occasion. I am awakened, just as what I choose to take a picture of awakens beneath the weight of my vision. 

Instead of adjusting my camera settings, I simply take a picture, like everyone else. None of this is to say that we aren't implicitly aware of our surroundings, recognizing where the light is coming from or what camera we are holding in our hands or what film stock is loaded in our camera or positioning our bodies to frame the moment. It's only to say that the explicit recedes by the act of taking a picture. 

What interests me most is this act of taking a photograph and the role that time assumes. 

When I walk with a camera in my hands everything presents itself anew. I see differently. I move differently. I think differently. The world comes alive just as it disappears. I enter time, as time enters me. It's a rather paradoxical movement of thought. As I focus, positioning myself in relation to what I'm taking a picture of, everything else becomes a blur. I'm instantly caught in the moment, enraptured by the distance and perspective. The act of taking a picture commands a different set of relationships with the world. It changes me.

Photography isn't about the old stalwarts of philosophy, subjectivity and objectivity. It's about living time. It's about allowing yourself to become immersed in an entirely new perspective. My vision of the world enters the memories of the world. The world participates in the construction of my life. It grows and expands. It deepens. It is ameliorated by chance, welcomed by time. Time stops, imprinting itself upon our pictures, delivering a duration that courses through our veins, continuing to march on.

This is as true for the professional as the amateur. When I take a picture, subjectivity and objectivity fade away. Instead, an entirely new panorama, one without taxonomy, without prepositions, presents itself. The order of things works to categorize itself. It's not about appearance or representation or authenticity. It's about going beyond our habitual modes of engagement, seeing things as they see us, feeling things as they feel us, dancing with things as they dance with us - in a delightful, non-hierarchical exchange. 

Photography requires a new lexicon by which to think and feel and experience. 

Looking through the lens of a camera affords a heightened sense of sensibility. Choosing the moment, or, better yet, letting the moment choose you, is allowing yourself to participate in the construction of another form of time. The famous Russian cinematography, Tarkovsky, captures this thought precisely. He calls it, "sculpting in time".

Photography, to be sure, creates encounters - with landscapes, people and events. It carves out its own perspective. The camera establishes relationships, actively working to connect the disparate and the disjointed, the amateur and the professional. Photography levels that which institutes itself as un-leveled. As a result, a cascade of events ensue: landscapes shimmer, gestures are affirmed, singularities are - as-if-miraculously - brought to light. 

Everything comes to light when you take a picture.

Needless to say, you don't need a camera in order to "see", “feel”, or “think”. Yet, there's something special about the experience. Everything is amplified, intensified. Looking through a viewfinder completely transforms our relationship with the world. It transforms us. Everything is matched and highlighted in a remarkable embrace with time. 

People often comment on the lack of emotion photographers exhibit in their uncanny ability to blatantly disregard socially accepted norms to take a picture - to capture the last breath of a dying lover, to snap a photo as someone is unjustly shot in the field of battle. 

What is at work here? What role does a photographer play in this act? Is the photographer complicit in the photograph? 

Time continues to flow...

There's another side to this perspective, the humility and abandonment of self - at all costs - in taking a picture. The disappearance of the subject and object is the embrace of the ephemeral, the acceptance of the construction of time itself. It's a rather democratic thought. To truly participate in the event, photographers tend to the moment, as the moment tends to the event, giving or restoring life. Photography unlocks an unbridled appreciation of life. It entwines us in that which supersedes us. 

There's also servitude in photography, in “subjecting” yourself to the situation. A series of existential questions surface: Who are you to choose this moment? Has this moment chosen you? Are you creating the moment? 

Once that shutter fires, a single moment is forever captured. That moment will never exist again. Yet, it will forever exist, again and again. Again, and again. :) Barthes writes about this rather poetically, commenting on a photograph of Lowell Powell, a co-conspirator in the assignation of Abraham Lincoln:

"He is dead, and he is going to die."

The rather eerie historical photo shows a man who is about to die and a man who has been dead for hundreds of years. It's an extremely powerful thought. Time itself is laid bare. 

Janus as a photographer.

On a similar register, I could walk by the same rock on my way to work, at the same time of day, for the rest of my days, and that single moment (when I decided to take a picture), it'll be forever captured. There will never be another photograph like it again. The light will be different, the rock will be different, I will be different - everything is different, except what is contained / set free in that photograph.

How beautiful and stirring is that? 

I took a lot of pictures this year. By far, my favorite were photographs of people. Mainly friends and family. I guess you'd call them portraits, but I'd like to think of them as something more. Pictures striving to capture gestures, affects and tones. People becoming-landscapes until themselves. Entire worlds unfolding in the snap of a photograph.

A dear friend taught me about portraits. She said, it's not always about what you see or how you take the picture, it's about how they see you, and how they respond to you. It’s about affects, affecting and being affected, in a language that overcomes language itself. At this moment, the camera vanishes. So do I. So do they. We disappear, our swirling compositions entwined in the construction of a new singularity. It’s as fleeting as it is eternal. What is revealed is time itself. 

This is the true art of the photographer - getting out of the way to let time reveal itself. What’s enchanting about these moments, these singularities, is that everything participates equitably in the construction of a life. Ironically, photography has nothing to do with archiving moments, it’s about setting them free.