RE: [Leica] Suzy Q, again

[Paul Chefurka <Paul_Chefurka@pmc-sierra.com>]

>-----Original Message-----
>From: B. D. Colen [mailto:bdcolen@earthlink.net]
>Sent: Tuesday, September 26, 2000 4:33 PM
>To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
>Subject: RE: [Leica] Suzy Q, again
>
>
>"There is an aggression implicit in every use of the Camera."
>
>Okay, there's a bit of hyperbole...Certainly you're not being 
>aggressive
>when you photograph your child's birthday party....But what 
>are PJs in a
>pack, if not aggressive? And about that photographing of the child's
>birthday party, of Christmas morning, etc. etc....How much of 
>it becomes
>aggressive - Stand over there! Smile! Stop fidgeting?  Certainly this
>observation is at least worth considering.

Written as is, i.e. "every use", it's not just hyperbole, it's flat-out
incorrect.  If she had said that the camera can be used as an instrument of
overt, covert and even passive aggression, I'd have agreed with her.  But
that wouldn't sell as many books as making sweeping papal generalizations.

>"Recently, photography has become almost as widely practiced
>an amusement as
>sex and dancing..."
>
>Well, THAT one is sure hard to argue with. There probably are 
>more people
>regularly taking photos than there are having sex and dancing. And,
>obviously, this is simply her in-your-face way of noting how ubiquitous
>photography had become when she wrote the book.

Ah.  Maybe I see the hidden point.  Everybody does it.  It is a Bad Thing.
Ergo everybody is doing a Bad Thing.  Hope I'm wrong about that
interpretation.

>"A way of certifying experience, taking photographs is also a
>way of refusing
>it-- by limiting experience to a search for the photogenic, by 
>converting
>experience into an image, a souvenir."
>
>Now THAT is really an interesting observation. For the camera most
>definitely provides distance and protection in uncomfortable 
>situations. It
>distances the photographer from the action, even if he or she is in the
>midst of it. I know that when I came back from Somalia in '93, 
>and wrote a
>"reporters notebook" column for Newsday about my experiences, 
>one of the
>things I wrote about was the phenomenon of observing the starvation and
>abject poverty through my viewfinder, and therefore NOT having to truly
>experience it, or respond to it on a direct, personal level.

I've felt the "camera as shield" phenomenon too.  But again, SS is
describing a very limited reaction to some acts of photographing as if it
were universal - that all people experience this all the time with all sorts
of photography.  If her message was "camera as shield", the hyperbole
undermines it.  "Camera as Shield" is an intersting thought.  Photography as
a refusal to experience is just absurd.

>"it would not be wrong to speak of people having a ' compulsion' to
>photograph: to turn experience itself into a way of seeing."
>
>Okay, not everyone. But some people? I don't know about you, 
>but I don't go
>anywhere without a camera. And if I'm at a party, or in a 
>similar crowded,
>noisy, social situation where my hearing aides crap out on me, having a
>camera allows me to just drift around photographing, without having to
>pretend I'm hearing people and having conversations I'm not 
>really having.

I'd argue that your use of a camera in those situations isn't compulsive,
it's just a convenient and enjoyable defense mechanism.  But again, SS seems
to be tarring everyone with a camera with her brush of compulsion, and it
just ain't so.

>"Needing to have reality confirmed and experienced enhanced by 
>photographs
>is an aesthetic consumerism to which everyone is now addicted."
>
>Come on...This one is so obvious as to be a "Duh!" Why do  10s 
>of millions
>of tourists have their photo taken by 10s of millions of other 
>tourists in
>front of the Eiffel Tower and the Grand Canyon? To show that they were
>there. Certainly their friends have seen - BETTER - photos of 
>those places.
>But the photo of Art and Alice in front of the tourist 
>attraction allows
>them to "consume" it and show it off.

I think her analysis of what "everyone" needs or is addicted to is suspect -
I'd want some evidence besides SS's say-so.

Arthur has posted a lot of Sontag quotes over tha past while.  From them, I
can only say I find her outlook relentlessly dystopian and her arguments
hyperbolic in the extreme.  No a good start for a popular philosopher, if
you ask me.

Paul