Some Thoughts On Photography

One of the things I find frustrating when I’m taking a photograph is that the physical act of pointing a camera at someone means they will try to force an expression or gesture that is not genuine. I’ll see an interesting scene, for instance at the New Road a few days ago: a Tuk Tuk driver, sheltered from the rain in his cab, lighting a cigarette. I pointed the camera, and the driver instinctively hid the cigarette and turned away. I feel very invasive when I am on the street taking photographs, and it is what makes it so hard to capture life with a camera: people don’t want their lives exposed on some tourist’s film.

This is the reason I find interest in films like Baghdad High or photo projects such as the camera on the park bench or Frankie Yu and Jonathan Tsun’s senior project. In Baghdad High, four video cameras are given to four friends attending senior year at a high school in the middle of the invasion of Iraq in 2004. Rather than having a photographer or news crew document the subjects, the movie puts the task on the subjects themselves: they have to document their lives, themselves, and what is around them. In one memorable scene, gunfire rumbles off in the distance as the electricity goes out, yet Hayder still takes the time to film himself going to get the generator started: would a news crew have thought this relevant or interesting? Would a news crew have been around at 11:00PM? Probably not, but it was a very revealing glimpse into their lives. While most news organizations wouldn’t find Anmar singing a particularly off-tune rendition of some Britney Spears song broadcast worthy, he himself was proud of his singing ability so he decided to film it. This kind of intimate portrayal of his life is what made the movie so humanizing; it went beyond “video of boy on street” or “photo of girl in veil”. By putting the cameras in the hands of the subject, the movie had a lot of interesting scenes that otherwise would have gone unnoticed. For instance, all four students record footage of their family’s views on the day of the execution of Saddam Hussein, and the viewpoints are those that you wouldn’t get out of a traditional interview with a journalist: the discussions are intimate dinner-table talks, not talking-head media personalities giving their spin on the news.

I’ve been interested in doing a project like this for a while, but there were a number of logistical problems: what kind of cameras to use? How are the photos retrieved? Film or digital? With these new computers as a storage and data transmission center for the photos, this project can soon become a reality. To test things out, I gave Shyami my camera for an hour, telling him some specific rules: the strap is always around your neck, do not run, do not touch the glass…other than that, run walk wild. Here are some of the photos he took.

The telephoto lens was too heavy for Shyami, so I set it up on a tripod for him for this shot.

Shyami wanted me to take a photo of his marble sitting in this guava.

I find the photos Shyami took today really interesting, especially for someone who has never used a camera before. I’d love to get Shyami his own point and shoot before I leave, so that he can continue to take pictures — every hour of every day he asks me if he can use my camera!

That’s all for now.
Charles