A Nut With A Philosophy On Photography
A Nut with a Philosophy on Photography1
I have this little book — a theory on the camera that I quite enjoy. A tight little volume that brackets off the camera and examines the impact that the singular phenomenon of automated camera technology is having on society, and the rest of the world. It is quite a dramatic thing, to be able to reproduce the human visual experience with ever increasing speed and ease. When this little book was published —1983, I believe — digital cameras were still practically science fiction. Since then, a lot has changed. For instance, I would never have been able to send a stranger photographs depicting my most delusory binges when I was a sexually adventurous young man. In 1983, one had to be a semi-skilled photographer just to depict a bowl of fruit, never mind take the kind of well lit, perfectly framed photograph that makes the subject matter appear appetizing in some way. With the iphone, the camera could be dropped into the toilet as the shutter haphazardly snaps, and it still might take a photo one could consider to be appetizing. I suppose I should be grateful. Imagine my father coming across my putrid typing apparatus, filled with the type of photography my son has forced me to look at. My god, if I linger on that thought at all, I become incapacitated — I’ll fall right off my chair, if I think about my father peering into my youthful goofs. Today, any idiot can take a picture at any time, no matter what state he or she might be in. A great deal has changed with just the proliferation of these stupid little phones. And the technology is not stopping there — no, it’s growing faster, and faster, at ever increasing speeds. Soon you won’t even need a camera. A person like Jules, for instance, who wants a ladyboy to dress up as his daughter and act out his incestuous fantasies. Jules would not even need the ladyboy. He would simply utter a few words, and everything that my son is showing in his photos would appear before him… There is this one passage in my book on photography that has always struck me as quite severe, where the author proposes that if the camera technology continues on its course it will eventually lead to a nuclear explosion. I have memorized the phrase so that you would know what I’m talking about. Do you want to hear it? I can easily recite it for you but it’s pretty long, so bear with me. I am going to recite it. Here it goes. Ah, hum — The photographic universe, like the one by which we are currently surrounded, is a chance realization of a number of possibilities contained within camera programs which correspond point for point to a specific situation in a combination game. All combinations are realized by chance, but over time, all possible combinations are necessarily realized. If, for example, an atomic bomb is entered into the program of any apparatus as a possibility, then it will happen by chance... I first read this essay on photography maybe 20 years ago, and although the essay in its entirety never really left me — especially in the context of examining the wasted universe my son constructed around him with the photography he created using his disgusting little iphone and his putrid typing apparatus — both of which I purchased for him, let us not forget! — this section about the atom bomb in particular I find frequently in the front of my mind. I find it to be at once incredibly explosive, and incredibly confusing. It took me a long while to really come to grips with any notion that camera technology could contribute to an atomic bomb going-off, even if I do, for whatever reason, see some inherent truth in the idea without any further explanation. And yes, of course I can see how the nuclear bomb may be employed metaphorically. I do remember what you told me about metaphors, I promise you. However, I don’t think it has to be a metaphor. The effects of camera automation are really quite severe. You don’t have to know very much about gadgets to realize just how many different instances of technology — different programs — are functioning at once each time the iphone takes one of its ugly little i-photos. And now, because of my son’s photography, I can see the atom bomb rationale. Oh yes, I see it quite clearly. In fact, I see it bursting from my son out of a pair of lady’s undergarments. Quite explosive — quite explosive indeed!