I am a Camera
“I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking.” Christopher Isherwood, author and dramatist
What would it be like to be a fly on the wall in someone else’s life?
Anyone with a camera — a little point and shoot, a manual with a huge zoom lens, or a Family Dollar five buck instant camera can know the answer. A camera is magic. You put your eye to the little glassed in hole in the back, or the viewer a digital camera offers and you’re in a whole new world. Sometimes, someone else’s world.
Once upon a time, a very shy man named William Gedney lived all alone in a coldwater apartment in a scruffy part of New York. Mr. Gedney was so quiet that no one seemed to know he was there; he spent hours pointing his camera out his window and towards the people on the streets below. He wrote in his notebooks that he was fascinated by how people shared space and time with each other yet were so apart. Anyone who’s ever felt even a moment of loneliness must understand this.
William Gedney wandered over America, taking photos of people who accepted his presence so fully that they didn’t seem to notice he was capturing their lives on film. Newspaper critic Richard Rodriquez describes his favorite Gedney photo: “Three girls peeling potatoes in a small kitchen in eastern Kentucky. Each looks in a different direction but their bodies imitate one another as in a dance or a dream, each girl standing on one leg. They remind me of young birds, waiting for the wind.”
What is most wondrous about a camera is that anyone can express themselves with a camera. One must simply LOOK, and shoot. If you ever want to know yourself well, pack a lunch, grab a camera, fill your pockets with unused film and hike, drive or even take a bus to the next town. Wander alone, just looking and shooting. But be careful; filling your eyes and heart with new and different visions is addictive.
Meditation for the Day
No place is boring, if you’ve had a good night’s sleep and have a pocket full of unexposed film. Robert Adams, author and photographer
Action for the Day
When my life feels boring or so stressful, I wish I were somewhere else, I will be. I’ll grab a camera, even a cheap instant camera or two or three, pack a lunch, and head out to my space. Wherever I want that to be.
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