An Overdose of Images

I continue with the experience of feeling overwhelmed with this History of Photography class, but today it’s different – I feel overwhelmed by the images themselves! It’s just too much to take in. I seem to do ok, reading and absorbing new info, and then I’ll turn the page, and BAM - I see an image that floods me with feeling. I read some more, I think awhile, I turn the page, and WHAM – there’s another one! I feel as if I’m reeling in a house of mirrors – I keep running into the edges, the walls that wake me from slumber, and give me a hard-edged view of myself and the world. Wow – there is nothing academic about this experience!

My father refuses to watch TV, or go to the movies. Among other things, he says they are too emotionally draining and disturbing. I think, now, I see why. The eye lets in what the mind is not ready to understand, or the body doesn’t want to feel. Images provoke a pre-conscious experience, a total, systemic involvement, and it is not easy to simply walk away! I find I want to dwell with each image, get to know it better, absorb it, and breathe it in. Yet the words lead me on. Just one more paragraph, one more idea, one more… With images, it’s different. I want to stay, and FEEL it! I want to luxuriate in the image, and not rush away. It’s as if a book about photography creates, within me, an oxymoron – it contradicts itself. I can’t read about photography and experience it at the same time!

It’s as if the images are intoxicating. They seduce one, they entice and they tantalize; they cause one to want to tarry. This is not education – this is emotional assault! And I love it!! I love this visceral snare, as if I were living in a vacuum and welcomed being sucked up into something more marvelous and miraculous. I am an addict for images. The words may wash over me, but the images hound and harass me. They beckon, and captivate, and confound my defenses. I am a sucker for such refuge, a voyager eager to embark. Their come-hither look leads me down the pathway to discovery, and I go willingly, and wantonly.

Is it fair to liken images to intoxication? It sounds so crass, and even disgusting. Well, that’s not what I mean, nor what it feels like. It feels more elevated, as if it were a spiritual intoxication. I guess I can understand the proverbial fear-of-cameras as implements that suck up one’s spirit, for they do! Rather, they capture one’s spirit, and expose it to others. And most of us would rather the world not see! We want to be more private. We believe we are more invisible. And we are shocked when someone takes a picture of us that tells more than we meant to say.

Photography is truly a double-edged sword. It creates feelings when we least expect them, and it reveals aspects of ourselves or our world that we just don’t want to see. And it is powerful, like a sword. It is definitely a hand-held tool, and perhaps old-fashioned and elegant, too. But maybe that depends on the photograph. Some hit us like a bombshell, and others dust over us like a feather. Just imagine – all these words wasted trying to describe the effects of an image!

Yet are these words wasted? Perhaps they are like the miner’s tool, the pick and axe, enabling me to ferret out the feelings and substance of photography’s meanings. What mixed metaphors I use! They come to me unbidden, like images do. What is one to do? I feel as if I need to expunge them, express and expose them, to be done with them! Yet I’m hoping they will lead me on a pathway to new views…

Which reminds me of an image: two children go up a path to a hidden point of view. Who is that by? Where did I see it? It comes so plainly to mind, yet I can’t pull up the particulars. I checked the text book, but can’t find it. Maybe it was in the class slides. The artist was wounded in World War I, and feared he would never photograph again. The children are his, and they’re going off to the garden. But this image belongs to the world. It evokes such feelings, that it cannot be forgotten. Even in this remembered phase, it is evocative. What feelings are being provoked/evoked? That is the question! Putting it in words is so blunt and brutal, compared to the actual image. Where is it? WHAT is it? OK, now I must really search my class notes… No luck so far; it must be in the book. I distinctively remember it being on the left-hand page. Let’s try again… I give up. And maybe that’s the point. Images are not intentional. They do not DO what we want them to do! They do not do our bidding. They come when they want, with the force of their will, not our own. And that’s why we feel so strongly about them – we love them, or hate them, or feel haunted by them. Is there anyone who can simply walk away? I can’t imagine it!

1/21/06 4:45 AM Sat