Fragments
Today in my photography class, my professor read a very mystic quote from Susan Sontag’s On Photography, which lead to a discussion about tourism. When I think about tourism I think about this movie and about changing my major. I could never justify documenting people’s lives and cultures that I only witnessed and never lived. I just couldn’t get past feeling like a thief; I had so much to say but I had to be honest and only use my self.
Photography can be perceived as a right; documentation is an obsession. Our culture is entitled to history, to keeping records of literal images, right?
Anyways, this lead me to thinking about being at the Japanese Garden in Washington Park. People were littering the walkways in poses for pictures. At times we hurried through areas to avoid the awkwardness of interrupting a photograph. What would it have been like if people we just walking, no cameras?
How much we have missed and continue to miss.
I started crying today in CVS. I ran through the isles looking for a person to talk to. Matthew watched my bike. I slipped past a woman and her mother, brushed my clothes against her arm. I saw a small girl looking at the candy. This was my chance. So I said, “that candy is almost as tall as you are,” referring to a yardstick candy of some kind. She pulled it out from its cardboard enclosure, and thoughtfully held it up to her body. I could not have dreamed of a more sincere gesture. I walked outside and cried some more, holding matthew. A few feet away in the parking lot, a woman with a cart directly faced me. She had on sunglasses. She was perpendicular.
I want to make it through this.
I think everything is going to be okay.
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We do miss.
Comment by Matthew — September 13, 2007 #
Do you ever feel like a thief that takes little attributes from people, people you can’t help but admire, if in nothing more then the way they say the word “cool”? I hate it when I feel like 10,000 pieces of my friends and models. Especially in a world where everyone can be known to everyone else. Sometimes I feel like I have to find those people who no one else has ever found. and inevitably I start to doubt my own instinct that makes me unique and I feel so damn fake. And then there’s the creative arts, fuuuuuuck.…
Comment by Jordan — September 13, 2007 #
Jordan
Yes AND No. Are you ready for this? We are all a part of each other and because of that it’s not shameful or lonely, it’s everyone, it’s unavoidable. It’s not even fake. I think I have only come to know this through seeing the vulnerability of people I admire and wish I was and feel like an ass around. But we’re all just trying to breathe.
Does that even make sense, shit. All I’m saying is what you know, but I think if we keep reminding ourselves we’ll be able to get past it long enough to make something that feels really good and true and maybe even helpful. Then I think maybe that is our contribution, cause we’re not afraid anymore.
Comment by Laura — September 13, 2007 #
i read and read (you) and feel saturated and endless, the world’s biggest sponge.
Comment by Vicki — September 21, 2007 #