User:Mano Daniel Szollosi/RWR 1.1/Essay/Draft

Daniel Szollosi Trimester Essay for
Reading, writing and research methodologies with Steve Rushton

TITLES
The magic object
The psychology of capturing
the power of capturing.
The magic of capturing
The magic generated performances of a camera
The camera – as an object – effect on the human subjects

'To live is to be photographed, to have a record of one's life, and therefore to go on with one's life oblivious, or claiming to be oblivious, to the camera's nonstop attentions. But to live is also to pose. To act is to share in the community of actions recorded as images.'
Susan Sontag

INTRO – self directed project
This trimester I am working on a thematic project what deals with a certain behaviour of the 'models', human subjects at the moment when a camera is present, and when it's exposure button is pressed. These acts, performances for the camera itself are often start repeating, replicating themselves: the result is photographic clichés. The topic of my essay is photo clichés, poses, human behaviour when a camera's lens is positioned towards them.

There is no such object out there that has this magic that the camera has.
I mean the magic as the great impact it effects it subjects. And not only who handles it furthermost the people in front of the lens. Our society i are aware that the the object called camera is 'magic'. It is not a single object, it creates something way more greater than itself.

There are certain phenomenons, viral activities which would not exist without a camera – such as forming bunny ears with two fingers behind the head of a relative of yours, 'planking', 'bunnying', 'owling', or just simply posing in front of a city sight staring and smiling into the lens.
Planking is special cliché. Meanwhile posing in front of any kind of city-sight, staring into the camera seems for me more an aim to documentate the fact that 'me' as the tourist was here, here you can see the proof, the photo rather than a direct aim the repeat this type of photo cliché, on the contrary planking is directly the aim of repeating this obviously stupid, silly and most importantly nonsense pose. In a way its about the boundaries, the limitations of its own: how far the 'player' can push the boundaries without offend the rule? The rule is to keep pose repeated, but in the same time keep the image bring something new to the table, keep it interesting, and motivating to the other gamers.
Th camera is motivation. It can be easily observed in another example. Young people goes skiing, they calmly sliding down on the slopes, but when the magic and planned day comes and one of them takes the responsibility to carry up to the mountain the camera in his backpack, the little crew goes insane: they go on the biggest jumps they have never ever dare to try.
Same goes with planking: planking is just simply would not exist without a camera.
When the red light is blinking in the front of the apparatus – and the subjects is aware of that – something extraordinary happens: it can not record people 'normally' or 'naturally'. What means 'normally'? Is it recordable, how people behave naturally? Of course it is. It is something similar to wild life photograph, but in these case we call it voyeurism. It can only record another layer of reality. There is a deep cultural impact on our society what forces us behave in front of a lens.
The record shows acts that the subjects wound not do 'normally'.

Interestingly everybody is protected by the law to be a victim of voyeurism. It is illegal to record someone then publish it without his personal contribution.
Is not it a paradox? It is illegal to record someone when obviously he acts normally, but when you make him aware that he is being recorded, so he get the chance to behave artificially is acceptable.

In the OPEN magazine's Issue 8 an article by Jorinde Seijdel was dedicated to the question of how the amateur photographs, these pieces of evidence change the mass media. She observers what happened with the photos of documenting the torture of Abu Gharib prisoners in Iraq.
These photos have been leaked – on the contrary of will the American Government of course.
They were first broadcasted in CBS's 60 minutes, and in the New York Times, and as it happened in the 2004 of course spread in second all around the globe via the internet. Even an exhibition was dedicated to this photos, or this event: ICP the International Centre of Photograpy in New York, and the Warhol Museum in Pittsburg showed this exhibition curated by Brian Wallis (the Director of the Exhibitions of ICP).
Jorinde quotes Slavoj Zizek thoughts: 'When I first saw the notorious photograph of a prisoner wearing a black hood, electric wire attached to his limbs as he stood on a box in a ridiculous theatrical pose, my reaction was that this must be a piece of performance art.' Theatrical.
The media has already a massive impact on the public, and it is very easy to observe. It seems like the soldiers were directing the tortures to be captureable. What if the soldiers were not torturing generally, usually their victims? What if the torture was a scene only for the camera? Would be interesting to know, what was first: the torturing, and then a camera was taken out of one of the soldiers pocket, and the record button were pressed, or just the other way around? There was a moment when someone took out the mobile phone camera then the action started?

Sight, object, lens - the tourist cliché. Why is it so enjoyable?

The scenario for a typical tourist photo is pretty simple. Place your partner in front of a sight, he stares into your lens and click. The result is a sight in the background and a person looking in to the camera, probably smiling.
What is this act? The fact that the tourist is somewhere must be documented?
Actually which intention is the dominant? Being photographed, or producing photographs by clicking the camera?
I think exposing is also addictive. Try getting a camera in your hand, I bet you would shoot your first picture within a minute.

ANNOTATE THE BURDEN OF REPREZ

A photograph – especially the documentary – should bring a moment of truth, a true fragment of time. But let me ask: is there anything natural in posing? Turning your back to a sight and freeze, and artificially smile? Posing is an act that a camera – or in ancient days a painter – gave to birth.

So in summary, people do travel a lot to have a look personally on a city and its sights, but when it comes to the moment of shooting, they turn their backs to the sight what they have travelled for and spent money to see. In my interpretation turning your back to the sight equals not being present in space. Is not it extremely strange? How is it possible to have any visible emotional influence on the subjects face if the moment which the photograph catches the subject does not stare to the sight which should it be influenced by?
It seems like we can not state that 'I was there' if we can not prove it with a photo document that we were there – the photo document that shows that subject is not present in the space he was photographed in. The aim – of course – is to give the ultimate proof of the fact that the person was present once in the past in that space. This is the paradox of tourist photos I found.
It seems like that in our society the act of documenting is in favour of our society rather than enjoying the being in the present. I found this in the very roots of materialism what is feed well by the capitalist - consumption society.

The deeper psychological reason could be similar to the roots of smoking. Research shows that even if someone succeed quitting psychically smoking, the desire to smoke is still there in the mind. (Although smoking is not only an act done by the hands also the mouth is included.)
By nature people are hyperactive in the sense, that they always prefer committing any kind of act with their hands. Our hands have liberated many years ago – we all know that, that was one of the turning points in humankind. But after many thousands of years our hand is still did not become a vestige – it is the most important tool. This pair of our tool needs to be used, this is the way how we keep it in form.
What I would like to point out is that we humans have the fixation to use our hands – constantly.
It is hard for us to get rid of this instinct to keep our hands in our pockets and just be present, just observe the space we are visiting.
When a sight is not in our direct surrounding when it is in distance – we can not touch it psychically but there is an object what we can touch, and to satisfy this aim in transformed way.

Bibliography

Sejdal Jorinde OPEN magazine, ISSUE 8 Wild images the rise of the amateur view on public domain

Susan Murray and Laurie Ouellette: REALITY TV Remaking television culture New York University Press, 2009 This can be read online (last: 2011. 11. 19) http://books.google.com/books?id=4_W19oHGzZQC&pg=PR6&lpg=PR6&dq=hoaxing+the+real+alison+hearn&source=bl&ots=3iKJh7G8wG&sig=v83gT28t9fPk2M4Am54YC3U_h0o&hl=en&ei=kCiwTofPKszt-gbHtdmKAg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CEMQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=hoaxing%20the%20real%20alison%20hearn&f=false

Alison Hearn, 'HOAXING THE 'REAL On the metanarrative of Reality Television

John Tagg: The Burden of Representation,- University of Minnesota Press, 1988 Chapter 1: A Democracy of the Image: Photographic Portraiture and Commodity Production Chapter 2: Evidence, Truth and Order: Photographic Records and the Growth of the State

Sontag, Susan: Regarding the Torture of Others, (article originally published by The New York Times) http://www.southerncrossreview.org/35/sontag.htm

Sturken, M, & Cartwright, L. (2001). Practices of looking: An introduction to visual culture. New York: Oxford University Press.