November 21st, 2022 / 3:43 - 4:55 PM
I almost always occupy the position of sole photographer on any given outing, usually lagging behind the party, twisting my body in swift pivots as things grab my attention and I step aside to stop and steal the scenery. However, on this occasion, as we hiked the Wahclella Falls trail, I was joined by my sister-in-law Kara as well as Ted and dog Reu, the latter obediently but with coiled energy leading by leash.
The air was damp and thick with fog. Condensation budded dew drops on warm sweaters of moss that clung to shedding trees. The landscape itself seemed to hold its breath in the high mountain ranges, but even still there was an autumnal movement hidden just beyond the grey curtains of fog and foliage. I craned my neck upwards as the ground slanted higher and the tall trees appeared even taller. The task of identifying birds in such ancient wooden towers seemed beyond comprehension, their aerial highways too far above my head to perceive. Such cumbersome and brightly dressed creatures as we were that trudged loudly on muddy paths couldn’t hope for any stealth, and very rarely did I hear anything other than the low hum of moving water in the distance.
Kara and I shared the same camera model as well as the same disposition to search for shots, which meant that stopping was a more acceptable occurrence. I’m ashamed to admit it, but with similar equipment, it kindled a competitive thought, however faint and irrational, to compare our photography. Only in visiting populated tourist attractions had I ever felt joined by other people in a collective urge to photograph something, and usually, I would be so repelled by the derivative tourism of it all that I’d be dissuaded from participating.
This time though, it was a much more pleasant experience. However, I’m compelled to lay bare my ego in this situation for the sake of transparency: there was the faintest fear that Kara’s photos might be better than mine. Naturally, this was a deeply repressed, nearly nonexistent fear. I was more than anything else happy to share the experience of photographing with someone else and potentially glean some insight from our differences in shooting. I was slowly shedding my old understanding of what it meant to make good art or just any art in general so even the idea of asserting that there was a better photo between the two of us felt beside the point of the experience.
We reached the end of the trail and stood gazing at a small waterfall. Its stream poured out from the neatly cleaved cliff rocks and cascaded into the black water below. I began photographing the waterfall from a higher perch, but Kara took notice of logs strewn along the edge of its accumulating pond. She stooped low and framed the wood in the foreground against the downpour of water. I admired (a little enviously) her decision and attempted to replicate it myself, nearly lying on my back in the mud to achieve my shot. I felt cheap in my imitation and discarded the prospect. Kara handed the camera over to Ted as I briefly held Reu’s leash. She stumbled about the logs as he snapped a few candid shots of her face in bewilderment.
Writing this now, I can’t help but reflect on the way I engage with my photography around people, and the revulsion I feel in public holding a camera.
What is it that upsets me as I stand on the observatory overlooking the vast Yellowstone landscape and I see a man lift his iPhone to snap a photo? Do I see in him my own uncritical impulse to document every moment of my life, not because I have any desire to look back on it, but for the shallow sake of collection itself for fear of death or forgetting or something else—and if I could, I might install a camera in my head so that no millisecond of time could be relented to memory? Is this the impulse we all carry in ourselves now that technology has given us the ability to steal time so easily?
Do I feel that this man is not engaging with the landscape properly? That him photographing is an extension of a culture of consumption that with one hand rips at the flesh of nature to indulge itself while in the other taking what little is left and covering it in a glass cloche? A landscape reduced to a marketable experience meant to satisfy our personal growth and fuel our digital image; left discarded and unexamined as we return to our concrete lives and think more and more that we are beings separate and unbound to the natural world.
Or maybe, most likely, a more cruel and selfish idea is biting me: that what was once an untethered love of photography has soured over the years as I discover that my passion is neither unique nor unreplicated but has in fact been so democratized and oversaturated as to become meaningless in the annals of art history.
Be it a cultural critique or an internal frustration projected outwards, perhaps there is a kinder, less complicated analysis to be had here. What do I benefit from my revulsion of a tourist taking pictures (even if my analysis is true)? Is a man with a Sony a7iii Mirrorless Camera any more justified in his appreciation of beauty than a dad with an iPhone? Did the money I spend buying this camera make me any better of a photographer or any less contributing to its oversaturation? And what does it matter anyway if a tourist photographs Yellowstone? He’s not drilling for fossil fuels. He’s not reducing the bluebird population. This view of the vast and enchanting American landscape that he has now captured on his camera, has it any less beauty, any less punctum? Has he robbed it in any way?
I am quick to assume he’s photographing in a lethargic stupor, adding to the growing digital noise of images when he could be experiencing a very personal moment. But what do I know of his heart? And what have I philosophized ad nauseam the value of an image to be? For this man, this photograph could represent the culmination of a long journey. It may well be a token sent back to a loved one he’s dearly missing. In his personal moment, here exists a permanent window of time forever unable to be replicated, likely to live beyond him.
As I engage in photography more earnestly with Kara, I’m scolded in my ego. I am an artist so entrenched in thought that I watch in frustration as others experience their craft so effortlessly, knowing that only when I was a child was I so unchained to critique and comparison.