On Taking Pictures

Spending time in downtown DC with lots of tourists taking pictures makes me think that this is just all out of control.

My cousin told me the story of his mother posing with a street sign in Italy that had her name on it (Della, which is evidently ubiquitous there). She stood under the sign pointing at it and smiling. As soon as she finished, she saw two other tourists take turn taking pictures of each other under the sign, pointing at it and smiling. What did they tell their friends upon their return? "We have no idea what this sign means, but we think it's important"??

Which leads to a further question--to whom do we even show our pictures? Certainly we don't print them on paper (heaven forbid, this would be far too permanent). Rather we put them, at best (or worst), on facebook, the thing that embodies perpetual change and the ability to redefine and re-present yourself at every moment with no tie to nor record of what was in the past. Even viewing photos (which used to be a communal activity as we see in T.S. Eliot's "East Coker": "There is a time for the evening under starlight, / A time for the evening under lamplight / (The evening with the photograph album)") has become an activity of isolation.

Don't get me wrong: I believe in photography. I don't think that everyone is cut out to be a photographer (although I still insist that it is my camera that takes bad pictures; this isn't remotely related to my own incompetence). But I think that we are all cut out to enjoy the present moment without a camera, concerned with it for its own sake and not hiding behind our concern for making a record of it.