Camera(s) rule(s)

Why a philosophy of photography is never more necessary than now.

It was a great night and you and your friends are on the last train home. With everyone shattered and falling about over each other, you think it the perfect time to take a picture and you would be right. You reach for your cell phone; set it to camera mode and line up the shot. You wait for the auto focus to bleep and you depress the button further. But wait. Who is in this picture? Is it just your friends? You're on a train, so is it really hard to believe that you might be the only people there? What about the other passengers sitting next to your friends? Do they want their picture taken?

It may seem very much like common sense but its rather amazing how easily this is forgotten. The simplest solution to this predicament would be to ask if the other passengers mind but with the excitement of the moment disappearing fast, this often slips out of the process. The question here is not necessarily one of common sense, but as more and more people become au fait with the camera, will the use of them become more and more reckless? Critic, Susan Sontag famously compared the camera to a pistol and the renowned landscape photographer Ansel Adams likened the automatic camera to that of a machine gun. These comparisons may sound dramatic and even clichéd when we think of the vocabulary in use today such as 'shoot' and 'capture', yet are we becoming too removed from the dramatic etymologies of these words? Have we simply become adjusted to the shock of these expressions? Such answers may continue to elude us, yet with the ongoing familiarity with cameras amongst consumers and the growing number of 'pro-sumers', would it be fair to liken a sightseeing tour around a popular temple to a mass shooting?

If so, what are we 'shooting'? Most would agree that taking a picture is for the purpose of memories. We all simply want to remember our experiences as if to prolong them in our minds. What then of the photograph? It is an image fixed to a piece of paper. It becomes an object that we can cherish, but what happens if we remove that image from the paper? We are left with a surface with no base, a symbol with no underlying value.

The analogy of photography to death is a longstanding one of which we struggle to escape but as we move away from a world of 'shooting' and fixing images, and into a world of 'capturing' images, perhaps the image that we take effectively becomes a hostage and one with a hefty ransom (as David Beckham well knows). If we return to the gun analogy, there is a considerable emotional effect when a gun is pointed towards someone. The same could be said for cameras and yet, we criticize someone for brandishing a gun carelessly and think little of it when some- one brandishes a camera. The argument could well be (and quite rightly) that the camera cannot take a life, but isn't it still taking something? Once I attempted to take a photograph in front of a Shinto shrine but I was asked to step to one side by the priest. It was later explained to me that the camera could absorb the spirit that flowed out of the shrine and into the world. Such a suspicious stance is not restricted to just Japan, as other cultures are known to believe the camera to steal a person's soul. In a society where 'images' are increasingly becoming the economy, perhaps personal identity, that image that rightfully belongs to each of us, that thing that we might call a 'soul' is at risk of being 'shot' or 'captured' and taken from us without permission.

So, what can be done about this recklessness with cameras? With the exception of outlawing them, the next best option might well be to simply encourage the education of these 21st century image weapons. Vilem Flusser writing in 1983 proposed that a 'philosophy of photography' was necessary for those wishing to understand the medium and break the shackles of its limitations. He argued that the camera, like any other machine is a black box that contains within it a finite number of possibilities for an image. Operating within those possibilities, the owner of the camera (Flusser refers to them as a 'functionary') makes their decision for the image based upon logical and educated guesses. The problem with this description of the camera is that it leaves very little 'real' freedom in the hands of the photographer. To the consumer though, this lack of freedom often goes unnoticed because it's well disguised by that spectacle of technology, the wonder and pride of seeing an instant memory of what had just happened. This ripping an image from time is enough to distract the consumer from the mechanisms behind it and it is with this distraction that Flusser warns of the dangers of the photograph if it were to ever become 'electromagnetic' or in today's vernacular, digital.

With the advent of the ubiquitous digital camera, few will manage to surpass the 'finite' number of possibilities that the camera presents, yet this what Flusser believed needs to happen when he described four solutions to escape the camera's air of control:

'First, one can outwit the camera's rigidity. Second, one can smuggle human intentions into its program that are not predicted by it. Third, one can force the camera to create the unpredictable, the improbable, the informative. Fourth, one can show contempt for the camera and its creations and turn one's interest away from the thing in general in order to concentrate on information.' In other words, Flusser is suggesting that in order not to succumb to the camera's programs, one should play with it and against it, experiment with it or even ignore it all together. One may have to get to know the programs but only then can one step outside them and see them and the mechanism for what they are. Such a theory may seem commonplace with any acquired skill, art, or even hobby, yet does the consumer think that when they purchase their Sony compact camera complete with face recognition software that aids auto-focus? My guess is no, and this is where Flusser's advice is just as profound now as it was in 1983. To many, the philosophy of photography may seem unnecessary but as with any tool, one must not only read the instruction manual, but develop an understanding with that tool. Many of us have had cars in the past where you grow to 'know' that car. We grow to know how fast it can go, what corners it can handle and so on. But the experience of what we call driving doesn't rest only with the car; we must also get to know the environment within which we are driving and then there are also the rules of the road to consider. Is the camera any different? There may not be lives at stake, but with images and identities potentially being susceptible to being 'shot' or 'captured' and then used without your knowledge by absolutely anyone, perhaps a philosophy of photography is like a good road map or the 'highway code'. Only after consulting these additions, should we consider 'shooting' or 'capturing' images.

Text: Gary McLeod • Photos: Atmo Nartan