Thursday, April 16, 2015
Campany Response
What I found interesting about this article is what Campany said about photographs and their relationship to memory and the preservation of an event. He said," the photograph can be an aid to memory, but it can also become and obstacle that blocks access to the understanding of the past. It can paralyze the personal and political ability to think beyond the image in the always fraught project of remembrance" (24). I find this interesting because I think part of this could be true for one time and part of it could be true for another. I feel as though now photography has become an obstacle for the memory because we focus on taking hundreds photographs on our iPhones of the event more than the event itself. Because our focus is drawn away from the experience and is more focused on the sharing of that experience online, we might emphasize how great an experience was to gain more Likes or Favorites. Where as in the past with film and photo albums, I feel as though the recording of memories through photographs was more to preserve those moments for yourself and those who were with you at the time the photograph was taken and was never meant to be shared with hundreds of people. And because the advent of smart phones had not happened, everyone was present and in the moment meaning that there was more of an engaged group of people to share a moment with. While this is not a perfect explanation of how I think photography, smart phones and social media and have changed the way in which we share memories and experience life, I think there is an incredible shift that has taken place in the last ten years regarding the way we as a society use photography to preserve memories.
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5 comments:
I agree a lot with what has been said in this post. With photo's being so "sharable" on the web today, it seems that people take photos for more of the immediate gratification from likes and comments of friends or fans. The photographer now a days may shoot an event in hopes of gaining more popularity rather than enjoying where they are at. When taking photos in the past you would shoot much more slowly as you didn't have the ability to look at your shots instantaneously and change the exposure, etc... And also people were more likely to print back in the day as well. This gave the person something to hold on to and look at every once in a while when they wanted to go back to that place. Now if something just gets posted online someone is more likely to forget about the image after the likes stop coming in.
I would absolutely agree with you that there has been a shift in the way society utilizes photography as a tool to perserve memories. Your post made me remember this fact that I heard about a year ago, that said, that the more photos you take in the moment the less likely you actually are to remember vivid detail of the event in comparison to a person whom does not photograph the event (obviously without referring back to the photograph). Whether or not this is actually fact or not, I am unsure, but it does seem to bring up a valid point. We are now so used to rapidly taking photos and being able to look back at them, that we take them rapid fire and don't even appreciate what we are doing and/or seeing. Yet after a hike or concert or whatever the event may be, how many people actually go through every single one of those photos they took more than once on their computer? I also agree with the point you made about likes. Just yesterday I heard a girl complain about how she didn't make it to the event but took a photograph and posted it online to make it seem like she did. It is interesting that we now are so engrained to post that we are having fun or what we are doing online, even if we aren't having fun, just to get likes or comments.
I find myself, every time I am at my grandparents house, looking through their old albums and albums of me. I think the physicality of the album is something that can never be replaced. I take them out at every family function, looking through the pages. It just feels a lot more intimate than looking at photos for likes on a screen.
Yes--smart phones completely disconnect us from what is actually happening. I've seen so many people who watch fourth of July fireworks or concerts through a screen while recording the actual events!! Or sitting on a bus or subway, almost falling into their little screens, continuously scrolling, scrolling, scrolling down feeds. Glad to not own one, though I do understand how useful they can be!
To restate the obvious: the sheer amount of memories we try to record/share forces us to look closer at ourselves and each other. We are no longer taking pictures of, for example, a family birthday party. We photograph what we had for breakfast, a sign we saw in a store, a sidewalk crack, and (like Kaitrin) a cloud. But by storing all of this miscellaneous visual information on phones, do we remember more or less about our lives?
I'm not sure I can say anything that hasn't already been said about this post but I completely agree with essentially everything that has been said about our connection to our smart phones and social media as a way to experience an event. By documenting the event the phone creates a barrier between us and the actual concert, hike, basketball game whatever it may be. We live through what we record on the screen and not what we actually experienced. We are there, but we are not there. To refer to Christie's post, I think that a lot of the time the phone as camera has caused us to remember much less of our lives in actual memory. Tastes, sounds, visuals that we experience during the actual event. Instead of a way to remember it in the future, it becomes a replacement for our actual memory.
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