This selection from On Photography put photography in many frames, if you'll excuse the pun. From souvenir, to evidence of historical moments, to rite of family life and even as a defense against the unknown, photography's accessibility allows it to, like the reality it captures, remain unable to be summed up.
I think the ideas that resonated with me at the moment are those dealing with "converting experience into an image, a souvenir." While in Cincinnati over the weekend for the Palette Club art gallery trip, I felt compelled to use my digital camera, even when I wasn't particularly interested in the subject matter. Now, this may have been due to the fact that up until the 15 minutes before we left ODU campus I thought the trip wasn't happening- but I felt I had to record the experience in order to bring it back and prove to others that it happened. While there, I wished I had taken my 35mm and some film because of the richness of images there were in this place that is largely unfamiliar to me. I saw so much worth photographing, worth "making into art," that my feelings of wanting quickly became gratefulness that I hadn't brought the 35mm-- because I would have spent all of my time (and that of the people who came with me) stopping and recording. So, I was relegated to tourism photography- proving the existence of the now past. Having made this conscious decision, I was reminded of Songtag when she equates the "photography-trophies" of the cosmopolitan vacationers to those of the "lower-middle class." Though it was only an hour and a half trip south to another city, there was a sense of exploration and of witnessing the "new" which lends itself so well to photography whether the subject is one of the wonders of the world, or just a street you hadn't yet seen.
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