Photography

Last fall, sometime in October, the camera that we brought down here with us was damaged after taking a spill out of my bag onto a tile floor roughly a meter below. We were able to get it to work for a while, but in the first week of November, it decided that it was done. We mailed it to an authorized repair company in Buenos Aires (the closest location), and received a call back two weeks later that the camera’s central circuit had to be prepared, at a cost of almost $600 pesos ($200 U$D), and that it would take at least a month to repair (this is at the beginning of December). After some family debate, we decided that it taking pictures in the near future was too important to us, and that the cost for repair was on the level of buying a new camera, so we went to one of the local electronics stores and bought a new camera (at approx. 150% its US value – that’s what you get for tariff protection).

Our experience with the camera produced within me a lot of turmoil. While my parents could easily testify that I’ve never been good at taking care of my belongings, my responsibility for this loss was quite painful. The quantity of photos that I couldn’t take made me feel incredibly guilty, which I think reveals a lot about some very typical attitudes towards photography:

1) I felt guilty that I wouldn’t be able to share photos of my experience friends, family and collaborators at home. As if I had robbed these people of an opportunity, I vividly imagined the disappointment that would certainly be expressed when I explained that I didn’t have any pictures of the Christmas lights because I had been careless. While I may have allowed myself to get a little carried away with this thought, it is useful to recognize that we often think about others when we take pictures. More often than not, I assume, we think about showing others how cool we are (a thoroughly egotistical attitude) through our pictures: “Look at this beautiful picture of us on the beach” we say, meaning “don’t you wish that YOU could go? We’re so cool (rich, cultured, insert appropriate adjective here). But we also take pictures thinking about others’ interests and to genuinely communicate events and feelings. Snapping a picture of a neat flower for a friend interested in gardening, or of a scene that can help explain everyday habits or a special event (e.g. a home and/or a parade).

2) I felt REALLY guilty for somehow destroying my own experience of events here, as if I could only participate if the black bag containing my camera was at my side. This feeling was especially strong in the first few weeks after I broke the camera when people asked me, “Well, don’t you have your camera?” Do we have experience for the experience itself or to create memories that can occupy us later? It seems that I too easily began to think this latter thought, without realizing that pictures are almost always supplemental to an event (not being a photographer, nor primarily concerned with documentation, my motives for taking pictures were not professional). I reflected, then, on my worries and realized that we are in fact quite fortunate to have camera phones (which are quite common in Argentina, more so than digital cameras) because they allow us to take pictures without worrying about it too much… we don’t have to make a lot of special accommodations to snap a picture and have a good chance at capturing a moment to share it with others or ourselves at a later moment. Picture-taking becomes less cumbersome and allows us to focus on experiences.

3) I predicted that I would feel guilty in the future for not taking pictures of events. This worry won out the debate over whether to replace the camera immediately, proving to be so important to Angela and I that we couldn’t eliminate the vanity and pride latent within it. My thought process probably looked something like this: if I don’t take a picture of it now, I’m going to forget that it happened (or at least how it happened), which is something that I’m going to want to know later; if I can’t get that information later, I’m going to be angry with myself and not have any possibility of (ab)solution, so I better make sure that I take pictures to avoid pain later in life. Being concerned with memory-making is important to telling stories, building relationships and maintaining our identity, but getting obsessive about it can certainly be unhealthy. It makes me think about how we never had a videocamera in my family when we were growing up, and how thankful I am that I didn’t have to perform in front of a camera at every turn, from first step to diploma, with every piano recital and pinewood derby in between. Preserving memories and creating them are different processes, and we must make sure that our actions are balanced.

These three points describe the pain that I felt during those two months that we didn’t have a camera, but let me describe to you the importance of cameras in our experience here that put weight upon these ideas.

In the barrio, the camera is one of the most treasured objects for the kids and the talleres because it allows the kids to perform, and to see themselves having fun. Whenever someone takes a picture, kids usually crowd to get in front of the lens, throwing their arms out and showing large grins while yelling the word “Guisqui!” (this word produces the toothy grin that US tourists evoke with the word “cheese!”). The kids then rush the cameraperson, trying to get a glimpse of the digital display of the photo, catching a glimpse of themselves and smiling and jumping around, hoping for another shot. While taking a camera into the talleres usually requires a lot of patience, the joy that it can produce is remarkable. Again, one can easily note the relationship that picture-taking has with identity and experience: “I was there”, “I know him”, “this is what I saw” are all pretty common statements that one makes when narrating a selection of photos from a trip. Such a powerful activity can become trivial when we focus on pixel size and data storage, but photography can be a very important way of getting to know ourselves and other people.

Keeping these lessons in mind, I’d like to conclude by talking about taking a camera on vacation. I HATE tourists and I hate BEING a tourist even more. To explain, I don’t think that all people that travel are tourists… I think of a tourist as a person to wants to experience other places in a very superficial way, without respect for local customs and without awareness for the way that their presence impacts the place that they are visiting. So as I think about a tourist, I think of the somewhat cliché image of a person with a camera around their neck, loudly criticizing the meal that he/she has just eaten as they shuffle along a busy sidewalk on their way from the hotel to the city plaza, stopping in the middle of a flow of pedestrians to clumsily take their camera out of a case, try to get the “perfect” shot of his/her spouse in front of a scene, hopelessly unaware of the fact that the enterprise is forcing dozens of people to walk in the street, to stop what they are doing, etc. Give someone a camera, and this bound to happen at some point, because not only do we need time and space to deal with the settings on the little machines, we also suddenly become possessed by the desire to get that “perfect shot”.

I am no exception. While I may at times exercise some restraint and not stop to take a picture of the National Library in Chile, for example, I do kick myself for not taking that picture now (or rather, Angela mocks me for not letting her take the picture because I was worried that we would look awkward on the sidewalk). We want to have pictures to record our experiences, but the act of taking a picture changes that experience. Instead of saying that “I visited the Palacio de la Moneda in Chile”, we say “I took this picture in front of the Palacio de la Moneda in Chile” (Palacio de la Moneda is the Chilean President’s offices, currently occupied by Michelle Bachelet). “I visited” vs. “I took a picture”… two very different kinds of experience, right?

My fear of being a tourist is probably faulty, but it is very real. I don’t want to get in the way, not just for personal security reasons, but also because I want people to know that I respect the experience that I’m having. I probably also want the experience to be more “real” by keeping the camera out of it… but why would it be any more real? Of course, some places are just “touristy”, built for people from a wide variety of backgrounds to visit. These places are often “set aside” to allow people to take pictures (usually everyone wants the same picture – people holding up the leaning tower of Pisa, or the clearly marked, Kodak-sponsored spots at specially appointed landscapes in Disneyworld).

Cameras are an important part of many middle- and upper-class individual’s and families’ lives, and they can be great tools for memory making, but their use can also distract us from other kinds of experiences.

To apply some of these ideas to a specifically Christian discussion of experience and memory: what would Moses say about taking a picture of the Red Sea during the Jewish diaspora from Egypt, or how about if the disciples had told Thomas to look at the pictures that they had taken of Jesus instead of getting him to come to their meeting to experience Jesus’ presence himself?