Cameras as Consciousness
By Alexandra Rose, Edited by Rebecca Brutus
Red in Ruin by Carly Hough
There are few things on this Earth I’m actually good at. I don’t mean this in a self-deprecating way; it’s just the truth. I’m content with this fact though because whenever I do find something I’m really good at, it’s the best feeling in the world. Oftentimes, I’m so horrifyingly bad at something, it’s like one of those cringe-worthy scenes you see in comedies. Gym class was like this. Art class was like this. Math class was like this. It was hard as a kid to consider myself anything special because I was below average in a lot of activities. That’s why the digital camera changed my life; it allowed me to become the artist I never thought I could be.
I’ve always seen photography as an extension of my human consciousness. In fact, the mechanics that make the digital camera possible actually resemble the human eye. The Bayer Filter, invented by Bryce Bayer, reflects exactly how we see color with a filter pattern of 50% green, 25% red, and 25% blue. What would a filter look like if bees or dogs could take photos? If bees were able to take photographs, would they be taking pictures of pollen as though it were a subject for portraiture? Would they be taking pictures of a field of dandelions as though it were the New York City skyline? If dogs could take photographs, they would be lacking color, since they are color blind. From a dog’s perspective, all of the photos would be dark blue, light blue, light yellow, dark yellow (bordering the color brown), or a very dark gray. Since dogs are joyous, would the photos still be joyful if the colors were muted? Is it possible to feel a world of joy without the colors of the rainbow? In that respect, the sky would always appear to be blue to a dog, but they’d never be able to take a picture of the rosy golden hues of a cotton candy colored sunset.
The human eye is special because we can see the world beyond ourselves and our immediate surroundings. We can take a device such as a camera and make a statement about ourselves, our physical surroundings, and the overall human condition. Through the camera, we can explore the world from many angles and can develop a consciousness to places and things previously thought of as inanimate. For instance, you can take a picture of the ocean in a variety of ways in order to evoke emotion. Taking a picture from the perspective of the sand evokes a feeling of being grounded on this Earth. A photo from the perspective of the rocks evokes uneasiness and reminds you that you’re always walking on your tip toes trying to protect yourself from the harshness of life. A photo from the perspective of ocean waves reminds you how ephemeral everything in life is. We’re depressed one moment, feel furiously happy the next, and then we feel peace. Our emotions are like ocean waves; they come and then they go. A photo from the perspective of seagulls reminds us that there is more to this world than just ourselves, that this world wasn’t made purely for us.
I never got past the stick figure phase in art class. I would turn any painting I did into abstract art, because it’s impossible to get abstract art wrong and for it to be ugly. Part of the reason I was so bad at art class was because I had fine motor difficulties. I received occupational therapy as a kid to try to work on these issues, but I guess I always thought that my art would never be better than okay. I hoped that one day it would be good enough so that people would no longer look at my art and say, “What is that?” When I started taking photographs with my camera, I discovered that I had an artist’s eye. I think I’ve always had an artist’s eye but just never knew it, because I couldn’t translate my imagination onto traditional artistic mediums, such as paper or a canvas.
When I first started getting into photography, a friend of mine introduced me to “Picnick,” — an accessible photo editing site that didn’t require the technical know-how that Photoshop did, but shut down in 2013. I’ve used several other sites since then such as Pic-Monkey, Pixlr, VSCO Cam, and Photoshop, but Picnick will always have a place in my heart. Picknik helped me realize that despite not having great fine motor skills that it was still possible for me to translate the alternatives realities I conjured up in my head onto an image. Picnik had a buffet of filters you could choose from to alter your photographs. You could make the sand on the beach rainbow colored. You could create a kaleidoscope from an original photograph of a sunset. You could merge two images together to tell a story. You could make the nighttime sky an entire galaxy. Digital imaging technology makes me feel as though I’m creating a world that is at a higher dimension than my own, akin to the planet Pandora from the movie Avatar. Suddenly, there were no limits to my imagination anymore.
People didn’t start smiling in photographs until the 1920s and ‘30s. Some experts believe that this was because people had horrible teeth, if any at all. However, others believe that as a result of the exposure time being so long, people simply didn’t have the patience to smile and therefore would choose a neutral position. I don’t blame them -- would you be smiling if you had to sit in an unnatural position for more than 5 minutes? When it came to posing their subjects, photographers utilized pre-existing customs from painters in order to guide themselves. These pre-existing customs in painting were sort of like rules of etiquette in the visual arts world. The primary rule of etiquette for these images was that smiling was scandalous and inappropriate. When the camera became more popularized, it started to play a role in advertising campaigns. Instead of forcing subjects to be serious, photographers demanded happiness at a click of a button to sell not just products, but to sell the supposed happiness associated with them. Therefore, people started to mimic these advertisements by smiling in their own personal photographs, whether they actually felt happy or not.
Reddit, a social news and discussion website, has a sub-reddit forum called “Colorized History” where digital artists colorize images that were previously only shot in black and white. Essentially, artists utilize Photoshop to add multiple layers of color that they can then blend onto a black and white photograph. Photoshopping these images isn’t even the hardest part. Digital artists spend hours and hours researching the historical context of a photograph in order to most accurately choose the colors. For instance, there was recently a re-colorized image of Audrey Hepburn with her pet deer in a grocery store. This was a particularly arduous colorization, as digital artists had to spend hours researching the colors of the products on the shelves. Colorizing history is a controversial topic amongst artists. They question the ethics, because we can never really know for sure what colors were in the photograph. However, many others feel differently and are more emotionally connected to a moment when viewing a black and white photo in color.
For me, viewing an image in color is a lot more visceral. Black and white photography has a way of detaching us from moments in history and make us feel as though we’re looking at them from an outsiders’ perspective. However, when I see these images in color, historical moments no longer seem distant, but rather up close and personal, as though I could’ve easily been there. Perusing through images of Abraham Lincoln, Hiroshima, the Holocaust, and the Civil Rights March in color makes 50-150 years ago not seem like that long ago.
It’s hard for our art to feel special anymore with social media. There are over 80 million photos shared on Instagram by approximately 500 million users a day. What makes my work special amongst those 500 million people? At times I feel guilty for even wondering this; I should be grateful to have a creative medium to express myself with. However, it’s hard to take a picture of the Nubble Lighthouse in York, Maine, post it on Flickr, and then see thousands of photos that look just like mine, so few of them succeeding in capturing my attention. They just fail to make me feel the awe it inspires when seeing it in person.
Film photography has made a comeback. This is surprising, because the film photography industry pretty much died in 2003 when digital cameras took over. In fact, film companies that used to process 5,000 rolls of film per day dropped to 20% of that within six months of 2003. Strangely though, with the rise of instant photo sharing apps on cell phones came the resurgence of film cameras, particularly instant polaroid ones. In 2013, Instax cameras became popular again, especially with adults who mostly grew up with digital cameras. Instax is a polaroid camera that instantaneously prints out the photo you just took. In many ways, the polaroid represents our modern day world, which seems to be going faster and slower at the same time. On one hand, we crave the nostalgia that comes from holding a physical image in our hand. On the other hand, we crave instant feedback, which is where the instant polaroid picture comes in. We yearn for a time back when there was no such thing as Instagram feed curation, thousands of followers, and countless retakes. We yearn for a time when everything we captured was real and spontaneous. With the Instax camera there are no do-overs, no public image curation, no competition; the moment is captured just as it is.
Personally, I’ve been wanting a polaroid camera for forever, which I’m sure would perplex my parents if I told them. I can picture my dad saying, “You have a DSLR and a phone camera—how many damn cameras do you need?” He wouldn’t get that what I’m searching for, though, is not more cameras but rather more authenticity in my photographs.
One of my photography friends once said that she preferred portraiture to landscape photography because “The landscape photographs are the same. With the right equipment and lighting, literally anyone could’ve taken that photo.” I can see her point but can also see how a lot of portraits can also be very similar to each other. A smile with the teeth. A smile with the eyes. A photo standing. A photo sitting. A close-up of the facial features. Sometimes I feel like I’m following a prescribed formula of what’s guaranteed to look good when it comes to taking portraits. This makes my photography feel inauthentic because I’m no longer using my own imagination.
When I first arrived at Ithaca College, I got a job as a freelance photographer for the Office of Media Relations. This was a dream photography job for a 19-year-old. I was going to get paid to take photos of my college and tell stories about it through my photos. Surprisingly, I felt more distant from my school when doing that job. The biggest need for photographers was at college events, where I didn’t feel connected to the organization, people, or activity. In fact, I found that I wasn’t able to experience the event as deeply because I was so focused on getting the “perfect shot”—often in circumstances that weren’t ideal such as large crowds or dreadful lighting. There is nothing wrong with this job or this type of photography. But I eventually left the position because I wasn’t enjoying it enough to make time in my busy schedule. This made me feel like a photography failure. I started having thoughts such as, “Maybe I don’t love photography as much as I thought I did.” This isn’t entirely untrue—I don’t take photos every week or even every month like I used to. I’ll often choose to use my cell phone camera over my heavy DSLR. Mostly though, I think this thought stems from a focus on monetizing and impressing others with my photographs, rather than enjoying it for me.
It’s difficult to be authentic as a photographer because we live in an inauthentic world. I can’t help but think of how many pictures I’ve taken of people smiling when they probably weren’t happy. I mean, how many people are going to let you take pictures of them when they are weeping and in the depths of despair? We have this problem of only wanting to document the best of life, but still wanting our photos to mean something. Maybe the problem is our fixation on forcing our photographs to be “authentic.”
It hurts at times to see that a lot of my photos look like other people’s, because my artistic voice was silenced for so long due to my visual spatial challenges. I like to think that my voice is unique and that I can create images that no one else has created before. However, I also hear my inner voice whispering that the point of life isn’t to be special but rather to discover the world around you and your place in it. I’m learning that photography isn’t about being as candid as you can, but rather about developing your personal story through images. A camera is a unique tool to get varying perspectives on my life and the world I inhabit and, at the same time, tell my story to all who care to see it.
References
"Bayer filter: What is it and how does it work?" What Digital Camera. January 8, 2015. http://www.whatdigitalcamera.com/technology_guides/bayer-filter-work-60461.
Colorized History. (n.d.). Retrieved February 22, 2018, from https://www.reddit.com/r/ColorizedHistory/
C. S. (2008, October 20). Can Dogs See Colors? Retrieved February 22, 2018, from https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/canine-corner/200810/can-dogs-see-colors
E. Z. (2014, October 14). Colouring in history: Digital artists 'paint' black and white photographs to bring people and places of the past back to life. Retrieved February 22, 2018, from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2792265/colouring-history-digital-artists-paint-historic-black-white-images-bring-people-places-past-life.html
F. M. (2016, November 28). Now You Know: Why Do People Always Look So Serious in Old Photos? Retrieved February 22, 2018, from http://time.com/4568032/smile-serious-old-photos/
H. A. (2017, January 25). Bringing the past to life: Brazilian artist turns historic black and white photographs into stunning colour images using painstaking research. Retrieved February 22, 2018, from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4156812/Brazilian-artists-adds-colour-historic-photographs.html
I.T. (2016, August 19). Film Photography is Making a Stunning Comeback. Retrieved February 22, 2018, from https://petapixel.com/2016/08/19/film-photography-making-stunning-comeback/
M. C. (2017, January 26). How Instagram Is Changing Travel. Retrieved February 22, 2018, from https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/travel-interests/arts-and-culture/how-instagram-is-changing-travel/