Imagine a world where light comes only from the outside, where nothing is definite behind your fingertips, where everything is unknown. You would of course begin to create theories of your own. You would imagine explanations that fit only what you can understand, only what you can comprehend within your little caved mind. In some strange way, I guess that is how we are all living. We operate within our own cave, understanding things only how we choose to. Such is photography. We take pictures of how we see the world in ways that we can understand it. Sontag’s passage helps to illustrate the continuity of photography and how humans use it to relate to the world outside of their ‘cave’.
Personal Histories of Photography. Up until meeting my professor for this freshman seminar class, I always described the class to others as one purely about photography. Once I sat down with the rest of the fourteen girls in the class and our professor, I realized how wrong I was to think this class would just be about photo. I seemed to have totally forgotten the personal part of the title. Within the first few minutes of listening to Roddy, our hilarious and talented professor, I knew his relationship with photography reflected the name he chose for his class. He is personally involved with photography and is so passionate about the art, you can see it in his eyes and the way he expresses himself.
Through photography, Roddy has found for himself “an ethics of seeing.” Everything he photographs or sees with his intuitive eyes is under scrutiny. What is the light like? Hard or soft? How does the angle look with the image? What am I trying to portray? He has created within his mind a scanning system for creating the best picture he can for that moment. But it is not so much about the content of the picture as what is being experienced at that moment of time. He knows how to live, and those are his ‘ethics of seeing.’
In the short amount of time I have spent with Roddy and my classmates - friends really – a common theme consistently presents itself. As mentioned in earlier blogs, the class is to be about “light and enlightenment.” My professor sees the world through beautiful patterns of light and relationships in ways that awe me. His ethics involve enjoying the moment, almost savoring the sweet happiness that the world seems to bestow upon him for that specific photo. For me, my ‘ethics of seeing’ through photography is not quite as passionate as my professor’s.
I seem to enjoy the captivity of the moment and the split second of time that is seen through the lens. That the one click of time that Susan Sontag seems to believe “testif[ies] to time’s relentless melt.” For me, that photo celebrates that one moment, and gives it the ability to live on through the years. It is a commemoration of that split second, not necessarily a piece of it that is frozen forever. Photography is an art and a gift and an ability to capture what will eventually change. It is beautiful and I am only now beginning to understand how much of an expression and enjoyment it can be. Here’s to light and enlightenment!