(Autumn sunrise on the valley of Taranta Peligna, Majella National Park - Italy. 2009)
Shapes
and lines, impressions and brush strokes of red, blue and black were
shining on the screen: the picture of a deep canyon photographed at
sunrise after a light snowstorm opened my lecture. The always
pleasant-to-hear “Ooohs!” and “Aaahs!” were there to welcome
its appearance and when I asked the audience wether they knew the
location shown in the picture, people appeared confused. “Himalaya!”
suggested a woman; “No. It's in Canada” shouted a man in the very
back of the theater. I was disappointed or, better, I was shocked:
two-thirds of the audience were represented by the staff of a
national park in Central Italy and none of them was able to recognise
a very distinctive valley of the nature reserve, which lied just 20
kilometres from where I was speaking! Could they really have
overlooked the valley, or was perhaps the magic light in the picture
making it look different? When I finally revealed the location, most
people were suprised and a few smiled at me. One even said, “Oh
yes, I was about to say so...”. Once again it seemed to me as if,
ignorance apart, the trained eye of a photographer might have seen
something special for the majority and realized an image that
apparently went beyond the general perception of that particular
subject.
A
few years later, in a completely different situation, two curious
Ladakhi men were , completely in awe, at the LCD screen on the rear
my camera. They had paused on their walk to watch me photographing at
the side of the trail. I was now showing them the picture I had just
taken of the scenery in front of their village: round slopes of a
very colorful hill ending against the rugged outline of an Himalayan
peak. The view was breathtaking and the light of the afternoon was
nice, but the picture was probably nothing more than a record shot.
Yet, I was puzzled by the incredible response of those two men: they
couldn't stop looking at the little screen and seemed completely
speechless in front of it. Their astonishment was palpable and it
made me reflect on the situation. The guys had always lived there and
that scenery must have been nothing new for them. Tourists and
cameras must have been seen in those mountains already for some
decades. Besides, due to rather conventional light conditions, that
very same scene must have occurred hundreds of thousands times in
their lives. It must have been something else: it seemed as if they
were seeing it for the first time.
These
two anecdotes show some similarities, although they took place in two
distinct contexts and are probably born out of two very different
human experiences. Lack of interest and superficiality have possibly
determined the people response in the first story, curiosity for what
is new, exotic and perhaps the vivid colors of my camera to be
considered in the second one. These two events made me reflect on the
very peculiar reaction we manifest whenever we look at something
which appears on a screen.
More
than often we seem to be naturally drawn to look at a restricted,
reduced and flat reproduction of reality rather than the world
itself. Images seem more interesting and our impression of the
subject itself seems in this way to last longer. Our brain (our
“memory”) retains still images and these probably have a stronger
impact on it than the flow of real events. It has always been like
that, and since the digitalisation of photography and the wider
access to cameras or camera-like devices the occurrence of this
aspect could only increase. The result is now in front of everyone:
looking at a screen has become today perhaps one of our commonest
acts. Images grab our attention immediately: they provide some real
fun that can be even shared with others. This is what makes
photography and visuals magic and so incredibly powerful; it is
probably the reason why me and you are now reading this blog.
(Slopes and ridges at sunset in Hemis National Park, Ladakh - India. 2015)
Yet,
this aspect can also have some serious consequences, I am afraid.
When in a culture images (“reproductions”) get more valued than
reality; when our visual expectations of something start to be based
mostly on pictures, then we need to re-focus our attention. What
represents the great success of photography in our world, in fact,
can eventually turn into its nemesis.The
incredibly high standars nature photography has reached today and the
(usually) peaceful competition they trigger among us, photographers,
are pushing our imagery incredibly far; sometimes too far...
On-location wildlife photography facilities and extraordinary
post-production tools can easily allow some people to obtain images
which have nothing to do with nature anymore. When these mix with the
typical human desire to stand out, results can get indeed pretty
“wild”. By commending such images, international contests and
publications then boost this mechanism even further. But this is an
old story... Even before digital photography came out, the trend was
set already for a long time.Photography
should retain its great value, which is being a powerful stimulation
for us to set out exploring the world, a tool to make emotions
timeless and share them with others; but this not at the expenses of
losing connection with some real life experience.I
feel we should make sure that for no reason images do get rated more
than the vision and the emotions lived by the photographer in the
moment he/she took them. At the end, photography is there to allow
us, humans to communicate with each other about what we love, not to
create an artificial, high-definition world, whose vivid colors might
seem nicer but which would strip Nature of its ordinary, yet
unfathomable magic.
Images and text © 2016 Bruno D'Amicis - all rights reserved worldwide
*Article first published in 2016 on "Forum Naturfotografie" magazine in Germany
