Don't expect a punchline
tl;dr I just finished some books about pictures.
The other night I was sitting in Cabaret Voltaire in the the old town of Zurich, and I noticed Walter Benjamin sitting over at the bar. I’m not joking: Walter Benjamin, the dead German philosopher, was across the room from me.
So Walter Benjamin is sitting at the bar, and he’s been there since I came in. Looks like he’s been there for a long time, actually. His beer remains untouched (I guess alcohol isn’t his poison) as he absent-mindedly taps the edge of a photo off the bartop. It doesn’t take long for him to get going.
Photographs! he suddenly cries aloud. Pure, stone cold irrefutable proof of events, dispassionate evidence of exactly what was happening in a given place at a given time, frozen in time. This ability to tame light terrified artists when it was introduced! What do photographs mean for the ability to make a statement with representation without being being an observation?
Susan Sontag spins around on the stool next to him and sighs. I’m sorry, but I couldn’t help but overhear, she says, tucking a grey lock behind her ear. Her female companion sighs, now faced with her back and having heard all this before. You have no idea what you’re talking about, my dear. A photograph isn’t really the objective piece of documentation that it may at first seem to be. Every photograph represents a conscious decision, not only what to document, but what not to document. A photograph is but a frame of the truth, and framing can mean cropping, misrepresentation, et cetera. For every photo taken, an infinite number have not. All of photography is but the thinnest sliver of human experience, curated and edited. Photographs Are As Much An Interpretation Of The World As Paintings And Drawings Are.
Benjamin sucks on his teeth as she continues. And videos? Look at that video of the pepper-spraying cop at UC Davis. Surprised as I was when I saw the justifiable outrage on Twitter against this guy (you should follow me!), I was actually shocked when I saw Andy Baio’s edit of the incident; look at that other cop doing the exact same thing at (X:XX)! That dude must be holding his breath, huh? Glad to be just out of frame, I’ll bet.
But that’s video, counters Walt, that’s even more of a direct representation of events than photos! How can you choose to reframe the recorded sound when you’re shooting video?
Video is just the same as photographs. It’s worse! Most videos are designed to lie to you, to suspend your disbelief without you even knowing it. Looks at this photo from Egypt yesterday… if you were to shoot a video from the middle of that crowd, how well do you think it would represent the truth of the situation? Better than the photo? More objectively than someone facing the other direction?
Benjamin tries to interject, but it looks like she’s just getting started. Christ, this one.
Remember the Saddam statue toppling thing? Amazing moment, right? But look at this photo of the actual crowd. Look at how many photographers were part of that crowd. Look at the UC Davis protestors… most of them are looking at twenty protestors sitting down. None of this makes what happens any less valid or, frankly, amazing. It’s just not as simple as it looks.
Errol Morris, standing behind the bar polishing glasses, interjects. And The Umbrella Man. And the Abu Ghraib photos, and Roger Fenton.
They ignore him. Maybe it wasn’t even such a good idea to include him as the barman.
Lady, do you even have a point?
When you’ve got as many viewpoints as me, it’s hard to have a point. And don’t call me a lady.
Sorry. So what does Instagram mean?
It means that you’re hipster and a rubbish photographer. No, just kidding. It means that sometimes the verisimilitude of photography is too much, that you want to get away from the cold hard facts of what you saw and make photography less dispassionate, more about what you felt: impressionistic, emotive, and ultimately unreal. It accepts the inherent fakeness of photography and runs with it. Forget this, she cries, grabbing the yellowing photo from his hands, ripping to to pieces before his eyes before he can even react. It’s a goddam lie!
Alright Sontag, I’ve warned you about this before! cries Morris from behind the bar. Get the hell out of here before I call the cops! And don’t worry, I got it all on video, he shouts after her, pointing at the security camera above the bar.