Cheese!

I just bought a camera. 

After losing my beloved canon of four years (I think it was stolen, actually), I finally caved-in and replaced it... of course, not until there was the sufficient two-month mourning period! After researching, and drooling, and then researching some more, I finally went to the store with two cameras in mind. I was waiting for the salesman to tell me which one to buy at this point. It turned out this man knew even less about cameras than I. 

Nevertheless, I walked away with a camera that put a smile on my face. I was thinking to myself "Great! Now I can post pictures of my projects and bikerides on my blog!" How could I have lived without the camera! And then it hit me. How could I have lived without the camera? I had no way to document all those moments of life, so how can I prove they actually existed? How can I say that I had a good time at that concert, if there are no pictures of me grinning in front of the stage? How will people believe any of my stories without the physical evidence of a digital photo? I might as well have not lived, it seemed to me. 

Ok, so maybe that was a little overdramatic. But I wonder sometimes. Cameras seem to get thinner and lighter every year, to minimize the bulk and promote usability. But with this freedom, we have established a responsibility to carry that little camera with us EVERYWHERE. Like the cell phone, it has integrated into our lives imperceptibly to the point in which our view of life could easily be distorted. What if people start to look at their lives solely through the lens of a camera? 

I saw an interview of Stan Brackhage once, addressing his movies on his first child's birth, and the experimental movies of the Vietnam War. When asked how he was able to carry out such intense topics through this medium, he explained that the video camera was a sort-of filter that allowed him to translate what was going on. The moment itself was too intense for him experience alone, but with the camera he was able to remove himself and then replace himself into the scene. He felt that he was not actually 'removed' from the event, but rather given the opportunity to abstract the actual event.