micromontenegro
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Maybe you'll find this article interesting, as I did:
Some time ago, I was giving a talk at the Spanish Academy in Rome — or, rather, trying to give a talk. I found myself distracted by a bright light shining in my eyes that made it difficult to read my notes — the light from a cellphone video camera that belonged to a woman in the audience. I reacted in a very resentful manner, remarking (as I usually do in the face of inconsiderate photographers) that, in keeping with the proper division of labour, when I am working they should stop working. The woman turned her camera off, but with an oppressed air about her, as though she had been subjected to a true outrage.
Just this summer in San Leo, as the Italian city was launching a wonderful initiative to honour the Montefeltro-area landscape that appears in Piero della Francesca’s early Renaissance paintings, three people were blinding me with their flashes, and I stopped to remind them of the rules of good manners. It should be noted that, at both of these events, the people who were recording me didn’t belong to professional camera crews and hadn’t been sent to cover the event; they were presumably educated people who came of their own free will to attend lectures that required some degree of knowledge. Nevertheless, they displayed all the symptoms of “electronic eye syndrome”: They appeared to have virtually no interest in what was being said; all they wanted, it seemed, was to record the event and perhaps post it on YouTube. They had given up on paying attention in the moment, choosing to record on their cellphones instead of watching with their own eyes.
This desire to be present with a mechanical eye instead of a brain seems to have mentally altered a significant contingent of otherwise civil people. The audience members snapping pictures and shooting video in Rome and San Leo probably left the events with a few images, but with no idea of what they had witnessed. (Such behaviour is, perhaps, justified when seeing a stripper — but not an academic talk.) And if, as I imagine, these individuals go through life photographing everything they see, they are forever condemned to forget today what they recorded yesterday.
On several occasions I’ve spoken of how I stopped taking photographs in 1960, after a tour of French cathedrals that I had photographed like a mad man. Upon returning home from the trip, I found myself in possession of a series of very mediocre photographs — and no real memories of what I had seen. I threw away the camera, and during my subsequent travels, I have only recorded what I saw in my mind. I have bought excellent postcards, more for others than for myself, for future remembrance.
Once, when I was 11 years old, I came upon an unusual commotion on a main thoroughfare. From a distance, I saw the aftermath of an accident: A truck had hit a cart that a farmer was driving, with his wife riding alongside him. The woman had been thrown to the ground. Her head had cracked open and she was lying in a pool of blood and brain matter. (I still recall with horror that, in that moment, it looked to me as if a strawberry cream cake had been spattered on the ground.) The woman’s husband held her tight, wailing in desperation. I didn’t get too close, for I was terrified: Not only was it the first time I had seen a brain spattered on the ground (and fortunately, it was also the last time) but it was the first time I had been in the presence of death. And sorrow, and desperation.
What would have happened if I had had a cellphone equipped with a video camera, just as every kid has today? Perhaps I would have recorded the scene, to show my friends that I had been there. And perhaps I would have posted my visual treasure on YouTube, to delight other devotees of schadenfreude. After that, who knows? If I had continued to record such misfortunes, I might have become utterly indifferent to the suffering of others.
Instead, I preserved everything in my memory. Seventy years later, the mental image of that woman continues to haunt me and, indeed, has taught me to empathise with others’ suffering rather than being indifferent to it. I don’t know if today’s youth will have the same opportunities I did to mature into adulthood — to say nothing of all the adults who, with their eyeballs glued to their cellphones, have already been lost forever.
Some time ago, I was giving a talk at the Spanish Academy in Rome — or, rather, trying to give a talk. I found myself distracted by a bright light shining in my eyes that made it difficult to read my notes — the light from a cellphone video camera that belonged to a woman in the audience. I reacted in a very resentful manner, remarking (as I usually do in the face of inconsiderate photographers) that, in keeping with the proper division of labour, when I am working they should stop working. The woman turned her camera off, but with an oppressed air about her, as though she had been subjected to a true outrage.
Just this summer in San Leo, as the Italian city was launching a wonderful initiative to honour the Montefeltro-area landscape that appears in Piero della Francesca’s early Renaissance paintings, three people were blinding me with their flashes, and I stopped to remind them of the rules of good manners. It should be noted that, at both of these events, the people who were recording me didn’t belong to professional camera crews and hadn’t been sent to cover the event; they were presumably educated people who came of their own free will to attend lectures that required some degree of knowledge. Nevertheless, they displayed all the symptoms of “electronic eye syndrome”: They appeared to have virtually no interest in what was being said; all they wanted, it seemed, was to record the event and perhaps post it on YouTube. They had given up on paying attention in the moment, choosing to record on their cellphones instead of watching with their own eyes.
This desire to be present with a mechanical eye instead of a brain seems to have mentally altered a significant contingent of otherwise civil people. The audience members snapping pictures and shooting video in Rome and San Leo probably left the events with a few images, but with no idea of what they had witnessed. (Such behaviour is, perhaps, justified when seeing a stripper — but not an academic talk.) And if, as I imagine, these individuals go through life photographing everything they see, they are forever condemned to forget today what they recorded yesterday.
On several occasions I’ve spoken of how I stopped taking photographs in 1960, after a tour of French cathedrals that I had photographed like a mad man. Upon returning home from the trip, I found myself in possession of a series of very mediocre photographs — and no real memories of what I had seen. I threw away the camera, and during my subsequent travels, I have only recorded what I saw in my mind. I have bought excellent postcards, more for others than for myself, for future remembrance.
Once, when I was 11 years old, I came upon an unusual commotion on a main thoroughfare. From a distance, I saw the aftermath of an accident: A truck had hit a cart that a farmer was driving, with his wife riding alongside him. The woman had been thrown to the ground. Her head had cracked open and she was lying in a pool of blood and brain matter. (I still recall with horror that, in that moment, it looked to me as if a strawberry cream cake had been spattered on the ground.) The woman’s husband held her tight, wailing in desperation. I didn’t get too close, for I was terrified: Not only was it the first time I had seen a brain spattered on the ground (and fortunately, it was also the last time) but it was the first time I had been in the presence of death. And sorrow, and desperation.
What would have happened if I had had a cellphone equipped with a video camera, just as every kid has today? Perhaps I would have recorded the scene, to show my friends that I had been there. And perhaps I would have posted my visual treasure on YouTube, to delight other devotees of schadenfreude. After that, who knows? If I had continued to record such misfortunes, I might have become utterly indifferent to the suffering of others.
Instead, I preserved everything in my memory. Seventy years later, the mental image of that woman continues to haunt me and, indeed, has taught me to empathise with others’ suffering rather than being indifferent to it. I don’t know if today’s youth will have the same opportunities I did to mature into adulthood — to say nothing of all the adults who, with their eyeballs glued to their cellphones, have already been lost forever.
