Travel with My Camera:
A Philosophical Defense

April 13, 2007

I spent a large part of my day driving across Wisconsin to reach Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Tomorrow afternoon I have to deliver a paper here at a conference). I could have flown, but it kills me to fly over ground I have never seen.. and so I drove. In the course of this trip I stopped to photograph/video anything that looked odd.. or expressed some quality I thought typical of the landscape.

Travel with a camera is often taken to be a way to miss the landscape. We have all witnessed unthinking tourists pull out a camera, snap a picture of a scene, and then hurry along. In this case a camera functions as an excuse not to really look at the world—presumably that will be done when the photos are developed. More subtly, cameras are sometimes thought to detract from one's ability to simply "be" in a landscape.. The implied goal for an experience would then be to escape any form of double consciousness.. that is, to not let oneself reflect upon the experience of a place.

For me a camera is a necessity in travel. When I am visiting a place and looking for photos, I am kept at a level of creative perception that I find exhilarating. Instead of wandering around in a passive manner, I search for the effects of light and work to bind together the elements of my experience into a loose narrative. The lack of a camera breeds (at least for me) a level of mental sluggishness. Without a camera I passively take in the world and notice far less. The camera therefore provides photos.. but more importantly spurs me toward finer perception.

The relationship between camera and life is analogous to the relationship between the law and faith in the writings of Paul.

Now before faith came, we were confined under the law, kept under restraint until faith should be revealed. So that the law was our custodian until Christ came, that we might be justified by faith.
But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a custodian; for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith.

[Galatians 3.23-25]

Paul is trying to make clear the connection between law and faith. Why, if faith is all important, was the law ever given? The answer as Paul works it out is that the law served as a tutor or "custodian" until faith came. The law is therefore unimportant in itself but useful because it leads one to faith.

The camera too is something of a tutor. In a perfect world I could imagine visiting places without a camera. In this perfect world I would experience what is around me with full perception.. and have no need to take a photograph. But the mind is so prone to wander, how I feel it! I am apt to become dull and lose interest in what is around me. This is where the camera steps in.. and like the law in Paul's scheme, it takes me by the hand and delivers me to creative perception.

I should mention that I do often forget to take my camera with me. Last week on the day after Easter we got a beautiful dusting of glistening snow. I drove to pick up a pizza that Monday night and before long I realized how sorely I would miss my camera.. These were beautiful photos I was passing by! But because I am used to thinking in terms of my camera, I looked at the world in amazement.. and on a more mundane level whenever I walk to school there are beautiful ordinary things that I can appreciate. This is the way a camera builds habitual perception of the world.. and does not need to be literally present to act as a "tutor".

This philosophy forms my approach to art in general. I have an inherent distrust of perfect photos.. as I have a similar distrust of "masterpiece" books. I prefer in almost all cases the unfinished and the fragmentary.. and when I do teach a "masterpiece" it is with the intent of pointing out how, rightly nderstood, a work is fragmentary.. not some perfect whole. That may sound odd.. but think about it in the light of the ideas spelled out above. Art, in this view, is a tutor and the true goal is creative perception.. which is a state of mind. Any art that sets itself up as an end in itself.. and not as an aid to contemplation of the world.. will not fit comfortably into my philosophy.. and there are plenty of works I am willing to discard as uninteresting.

Photos that have the look of a photographer waiting around all day for the perfect pitch of light.. or for the exact combination of people.. I dislike. Photos whose composition is too fine.. or whose value clearly derives from Photoshop techniques.. I dislike. Just give me the world perceived in a moment.. and then I can instantly see how someone else is responding to the world. Often it is from looking at the work of other photographers that I learn how to see elements of my own world a little differently.. and this is one reason I so admire the work of William Eggleston, whose photo of an oven is featured at the top of this post.