"another vulture on the scene"


June 22, 2004 « five things we're loving \| Main \| videos and sweets? » another vulture on the scene "The man adjusting his lens to take just the right frame of her suffering might just as well be a predator, another vulture on the scene." This quote is from the St. Petersburg Times, with reference to the now infamous and Manic Street Preachers' song-inspiring Kevin Carter, a photographer from South Africa who rose to fame after winning the Pulitzer Prize for a photo of a starving girl being contemplated by a vulture. This is an incredibly crass and unworthy analogy to make, but this was something of a point of reference that came to mind this morning when I was considering how I felt. I'm currently in something of a panicky state for one trivial reason and another, had troubled sleep and dreams. No doubt compounded by the fact that it's currently Arts Week in Warwick-land I was dreaming that I was panicking, there was someone taking pictures of me and berating me for not posing just-so. They dressed me and posed me and had the perfect moment captured to sum up the latest wave of anxiety to define our current generational fad. I found this quite distressing. The way that wrenching human emotion (not just the bad) and experience can become a mere aesthetic. I'm reminded of pictures of people crying on exam results days, of people joyful and drunk and finalist balls, of pictures of anorexia, of self-harm; and of published suicide notes. What is it about these publications that make me feel so uneasy, doubly so when the subject is me? This seems somewhat ironic and hypocritical when I embrace such self-exhibitionism as a personal weblog and am embedded in a culture of photo-documentation of mine and my friends' lives; but in truth every picture of me not looking just so, and not rightly posed makes me cringe. And looking at the common factor in the photos I like of me - it is the ones that are posed, the ones that do not show any touch of unrestrained emotionalism. This of course throws up all sorts of questions about the value and nature of ideal photography as an art-form for me: perhaps I would argue that the best photography may not be taken as documentary, for me the art lies in the fact that it is contrived. Maybe anyway. (I suggest you go read Oscar Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray now for more in this vein). Anyhow, my point is not to consider what makes good art or photography, but to consider what it is about this documentation of my emotion that makes me so uncomfortable. Maybe it is the very fact that we tend to take photography as documentary. We see certain pictures as defining moments, or whole weeks, or even a 3 year university career, when they cannot even hope to hint at or convey the complexity of emotion behind them. A picture of me looking nervous whilst entering an exam hall may not show the complex terror running through me. Maybe to some extent I am fearful that media trivialises what is very real and urgent to me. This is where Kevin Carter comes in. I am reminded of photographers for the local papers at 'A' level results day taking a picture of a girl in tears for their article, to sum up the feeling. We glance at it, to her thoses tears signify entire dreams for the rest of her life shattered. Perhaps it is also the aching contrast between the caring and un-caring. To me that is happiness, to you a good photo. There is something sickening about the transition of something life-changing to its documentation formed for entertainment. Emotion seems to be treated as something of a commodity, this seems somewhat perverse. These are all tempting ideas about what it is about this incessent documentation of our, or at least my, life that makes me so uneasy; but what I think it perhaps is most of all is an inherent human fear of that unrestrained emotion itself. I find pictures of me crying, sweating, even laughing hard to look at. I think that stems from a fear of being out of control. These pictures show me as me, and for some reason I don't want that to be seen. Are we conditioned out of our emotions? Maybe. To show them is frightening - it is to make them public. To have them documented visually or otherwise is to have them not only made more public but kept for reference, it also forces us to confront what we find unpleasant. What I do think, however, is that this fear ought to change. We should throw ourselves about on our whims more frequently. 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