Whenever I’m anywhere with lots of people with cameras, I become painfully aware of my own camera and how low-key gross they actually are. It’s that twinge that Barthes writes about when he recognizes himself as becoming-object, but it’s worse, because, for me, it’s from both sides of the lens.
I am the biggest hypocrite. I run from the gallows and happily take my place at the foot of the guillotine; I’m mixing metaphors somewhat, but I’m making another reference here: the photographer as executioner, as exegeted by Fontcuberta—the trail of dead leading back to France when the histories of the daguerreotype and the louisette (after Antoine Louis, the inventor of Madame la Guillotine) superimpose to give the assistant executioner the nickname of “photographer.”
Why? Because he “took the face”—slang for both taking a portrait and, yk, grabbing the decapitated’s likeness by the ears.
Gross.
And yet, this reign of terror seems to have a mind of its own.
My hands were a little full during the march itself, so I didn’t take as many photos as I would have liked. But that’s okay, because I had the most conversations with the most comrades at one of these.
As odd as it sounds, I’ve ended up strangely in my own head in past demonstrations; marching together, all alone. Not this time.
I was recognized and known. That awful thing I both run away from and know I desperately need.
What makes a photo “necessary”? What combination of form and function elevate it from merely “mid”?
My inner critic likes to rip me to shreds, but thankfully, I am instinctively and irredeemably documentarian—my sun is in cancer, after all—which means one thing: I am going to take the shot. It’s the hopeless nostalgia for every moment that compels me.
Last night, I saw a documentary on the Battle of Seattle called “WTO/99” that offered more consolation; the whole film was comprised of archival footage.
It’s good to trick yourself into believing that all of this is part of the struggle; a protest against oblivion.