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

This trimester I am working on a thematic project what deals with a certain behaviour of the 'models' or 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 repeat itself, and become clichés or memes in the age of the internet.
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 simply posing in front of a city sight staring in the the lens.

OUTLINE

Staring into the lens
Means you stare at somebody through the medium of the image. Can you stare through time, distance, you stare into the future what you will not see – essentially, the viewer of the picture stares back in time, into the past.

film actor has to develop a specific skill: they have to able to ignore totally the presence of the camera.

The moment when a camera appears something extraordinary happens.
this specific object has a great impact on the people. And not only who handles it furthermost the people on the other side of the lens.
People nowadays aware that the the object called camera is 'magic'. Of course because it is not a single object, it creates something way more greater than itself what we call an image.

The everyday people on the street. What happens when suddenly a TV crew appears, and they ask randomly people on the street? You can instantly feel watching the evening news, how embarrassed the people in front of the camera. They know every singhle breath, every slight movement they make will be captured, and later publicated nation or even word wide.

A camera is motivation.
Young people goes skiing, they calmly sliding down on the slopes, but when the magic and planned day comes and someone 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.

The tourist

20st century, travelling, globalisation, digital photography – enormous change in quantity

The scenario for a typical tourist photo is pretty simple. Stand 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.
So in summary, people do travel a lot to have a look by person on a city and its sights, but when it comes to the moment to shoot, 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 to 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 staring 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 with a photo document that we were there – so the photo document 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 find.

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 system.

The deeper psychology 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 though is one the most important tool. This tool of ours 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.