User:Mano Daniel Szollosi/Essay Outline

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. There are out there several object 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 back 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 be present in space. It seems like that in our society the act of documenting is 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. It seems like we can not state that 'I was there' if we can not proove with a photo document that we were there – so the photo document shows that we are not present is the ultimate proof of the fact that the person was present once in the past. This is the paradox of tourist photos I find.

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 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 - University of Minnesota Press, 1988