tuscany # 101 ~ don't be a tourist - do the hurty thing

Some time in the past ~ Valiano, Tuscany • click to embiggenHot on the heels of yesterday's (a) life in pictures entry wherein we brought up the idea of eye-contact adverts, my attention was grabbed by a series of tv commercials that are airing in the UK for the Olympus EP-1 camera. While the commercials are light on the eye-contact idiom, they are heavily invested in the idiom of celebrity endorsement, in this case, Kevin Spacey.

Now it should be said that I like Kevin Spacey as an actor and I am a "dedicated" Olympus man (my father was a Studebaker man). So, right outta the gate, I am inclined to look kindly upon these short & sweet espistolary-like and seemingly "personal" communiques.

The commercials are packed with little witticisms such as in the "Drive By" piece when Spacey tells us, "Point and shoot? That's a crime. Stay away from point and shooting."

There is also a bit of humour (Brit spelling) in the "Camera Guy" bit wherein Spacey tells us, "I don't want to be the camera guy. Ya know, Mr. super-zuper, 8 pocket camera bag, 15 lenses, 3 tripods, flak jacket ... I don't wanna be that guy."

Each of the 5 commercials ends with the spoken tag, "Don't be a tourist", which seems to derive its tagline status from the "Tourist" spot in which Spacey says that, "I just want to write my number on a life's arm and say, 'hey, you know, call me' ..." which seems to imply a certain level of involvement beyond that of a "tourist".

All that said, Mr Spacey ain't gonna influence my camera buying decisions but I must admit to liking the commercials ... especially the "Like A Memory" one wherein Spacey asks the question:

Do you ever take a photograph that looks like a memory? ... To take a photograph that hurts every time you look at it?

The script writers may have gone a bit too far and got a bit toooo cute with the word "hurt"* and the phrase, "it does that hurty thing"* but, that aside, I have been thinking more than a bit about pictures and their connection to memories. A line of thought that was greatly accelerated by my recent Tuscany POD booking making exercise.

Specifically, I have been thinking about:

Since the advent of photography the photographic image has been regarded as an aide-mémoire. The very act of taking a photograph signals the moment as worthy of remembering and, while objects break, landscapes change, and people die, the photograph endures, allowing it to be used to remember ‘what has been’ .... Some 20th-century theorists ... have disputed the photograph's role in aiding memory, claiming instead that it actually serves the process of forgetting. Roland Barthes believed a photograph can do little more than confirm the existence of an object at some other time, in some other place, while Susan Sontag suggested that with the passage of time a photograph loses its specificity to become a purely aesthetic object open to multiple readings. Ultimately, both Barthes and Sontag argued, because the photograph only records the surface appearance of what has been, and not the complex meanings associated with sensory experience, it cannot rightly be called a ‘memory image’. The iconic properties of the more durable photograph will inevitably replace the myriad details of the experience represented in the image; in the end it is the photograph itself that is remembered.

The picture - a picture of a picture - posted with this entry is quite possibly a very good example of a picture that has "lost its specificity". While I have no idea of the age of the picture, it does appear old enough that many, if not most of the people pictured therein, people to whom there would be specificity associated with viewing the picture ... well, I'd put my money on the idea that most of them are dead and gone.

In any event, when I was viewing the picture, none of them where around to give the picture any specificity. What that left me with was a very non-specificity viewing experience wherein the picture did become a "purely aesthetic object open to many readings."

Or did it?

AN ASIDE One reading that I had when viewing the picture is, "Where the hell are all the woman at?" Other than 2 young girls in the float, there are only 2 woman visible in the entire crowd. Any Italians out there who might give us some "specificity" regarding this issue?

That aside, aside, what I have been wondering about is that when one views a picture, one brings a wealth of personal memories to that viewing. No matter that those memories may not be connected directly to the specific referent in the picture, those memories will quite obviously influence what meaning(s) the viewer will intuit (from amongst the multiple readings) from his/her viewing of the picture. So ....

I tend to think that once a picture has become a purely aesthetic object - every picture I see in a photo book / gallery instantly becomes a purely aesthetic object to me because I certainly have no specific memory connected to it s making - and when that aesthetic object has "the iconic properties of the more durable" type, the readings / meanings can be very closely related to the those of the people involved in the picture and/or its making.

Once again, consider the picture in my picture. Without going into great specific detail, I was once one of kids on the float in that picture. OK, OK, not actually one of those specific kids on that specific float, but I am certain that I know something of what they were feeling and experiencing at the moment of the picture's making. Based on that shared experience, I am certain that one of those specific kids would have a very similar reading of the picture as I have.

I am also reasonably certain that, if one of those specific kids was at my side viewing the picture with me, we would not only share specific readings but also upon relating those readings to one another, we would discover that we shared an similar and somewhat specific experience(s) of the human condition.

Consequently, I am not so sure that I would agree, at least not in an unconditional manner, with Barthes and Sontag that a picture that has become a "purely aesthetic object" loses all of its specificity. In fact, I am not even certain that a picture can become a "purely aesthetic object" at all.

*cutting the script writers a bit of slack on the word "hurty" and phrase "hurty thing", truth be told, they are really not all that big of a stretch from Barthes idea of punctum - that quality in a picture that denotes the wounding, personally touching detail which establishes (with a viewer) a direct relationship with the object or person within it.

Comments

[Scott]

'There is also a bit of humour (Brit spelling)...'

More correct would be the spelling in every English speaking country in the world except the United States.

A phrase that is familiar to many of us who grew up speaking English in a country that is not the United States.

[the wife]

soon, the whole world will just text "humr" and be done with it.