Cell Phone Cameras Forever

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It seems like everyone had the same thought I had watching President Obama’s speech at the Inaugural Youth Ball last night. Cell phone cameras!!! Whether or not it’s appropriate, (I see nothing wrong with wanting to document “history”) I found myself wondering if any technology might replace the camera now that it is more essential today than television — and constantly with us. I just can’t imagine a world without cameras, no sci-fi scenario where they are replaced with something else now that they are cheap and omnipresent.

We like to remember people and events as static images, framed in our minds. And we want to remember images from precisely the vantage point where we stood at that place that night. Even knowing a million other people captured the same thing and we can search for it on Flickr, on Tweetpic, on anything really — it’s not the same if we didn’t snap it.

What was distressing was no one put the cameras down. It wasn’t a sneaky thing…take one snapshot and it’s back in the bag. No, most of the people there seemed to be observing it all through their viewfinder, which is, oh my god, the most cliched of cliches in modern life.

But what kind of things don’t we photograph? You don’t take a photo of the bride when the priest is about to pronounce you married. You probably didn’t take a photo (you forgot to, didn’t think of it) during nearly all of your happiest memories. Why would you want to interrupt a blissful moment? Distancing yourself from the action taking place and denying yourself the opportunity to experience it with your full attention?

Image from VentureBeat via Ekstasis, who points out cameras are what lighters used to be. Clayton Cubbitt quotes A Clockwork Orange, “It’s funny how the colors of the real world only seem really real when you viddy them on the screen.”

It made me think of an Aldous Huxley essay:

The saddest sight I ever saw was in a Montmartre boite at about 5 o’clock of an autumn morning. At a table in the corner of a hall sat three young American girls, quite unattended, adverturously seeing life for themselves. In front of them, on the table, stood the regulation bottle of champagne; but for preference – perhaps on principle – they were sipping lemonade. The jazz band played on monotonously; the tired drummer nodded on his drums; the saxaphonist yawned into his saxaphone. In couples, in staggering groups, the guests departed. But grimly, indominably, in spite of their fatigue, in spite of the boredom which so clearly expressed itself on their charming and ingenous faces, the three young girls sat on. They were still there when I left at sunrise. What stories I reflected, they would tell when they got home again! And how envious they would make their untravelled friends. “Paris is just wonderful…”

Cameras remind us to feel something, when perhaps we aren’t as much as we would like to be.

Posted by Joanne on Jan. 21, 2009 Tagged: , , , ,

  • I have to admit that I've never conceived of the camera as a device for capturing fleeting moments, but rather a tool used to carefully compose the world. Holding a cruddy cell phone camera above your head to get a blurry, badly lit shot doesn't fit the bill.
  • Actually, a photo like this was one of my favourite photos of the day -- it's the new millenium's version of waving a bic lighter in tribute.

    I never use my cel camera, by the way. I love the photo for its context and its... absurdity, really.
  • I also enjoy the photo as it so embodies the tech-savvy of our new commander-in-chief. But the video footage is a little disturbing. The cameras never go down. It's hard to imagine those waiting for the perfect photo enjoyed his speech (and such a great one!) with full attention
  • Hi,

    To use a cell camera more or less also has to do a bit with our society culture.
    Lets not forget that when cells with cameras started to appear, the japanese market was more targeted than other ones.
    With globalization, the differences between countries and thus cultures, tends to fade.
    With the advent of flexible screens we'll be watching videos on t-shirts, cereal boxes and so on.
    Heck ! One may even upload a video from the cell to the t-shirt :-)

    Kind regards,

    José
  • Julie Delpy's Marion voice-overs about this in "2 Days in Paris," when she, the professional photographer, complains about her boyfriend's incessant shutterbugging in Venice, where she herself declined to take pictures, knowing that it would interfere with her experience of the city to do so. To take a picture is to take yourself out of the picture.
  • Timmy
    In the picture above, there are a lot people using cell phones.
  • Timmy
    In the picture above, there are a lot of people using cell phones.
  • James
    Actually, I see many more people in the photo above using compact cameras rather than cell phones. Just look at the size of the screens —they can't all have iPhones, can they?— and the way they're holding them. No that it negates your observation about cell cameras, but...
  • Timmy
    James is right. In the picture above, there are a lot of people using devices to capture video and, no doubt, still photos.
  • Phyllis
    I see many video/photo-capturing devices in the picture, as well! It's interesting to see that there are many video/photo-capturing devices in the picture above.
  • My english is not very good, so i paste this passage from a long article of Slavoj Zizek

    http://www.egs.edu/faculty/zizek/zizek-the-inte...


    Interpassivity

    Against this background, one is tempted to supplement the fashionable notion of "interactivity," with its shadowy and much more uncanny supplement/double, the notion of "interpassivity." That is to say, it is commonplace to emphasize how, with new electronic media, the passive consumption of a text or a work of art is over: I no longer merely stare at the screen, I increasingly interact with it, entering into a dialogic relationship with it (from choosing the programs, through participating in debates in a Virtual Community, to directly determining the outcome of the plot in so-called "interactive narratives"). Those who praise the democratic potential of new media, generally focus on precisely these features: on how cyberspace opens up the possibility for the large majority of people to break out of the role of the passive observer following the spectacle staged by others, and to participate actively not only in the spectacle, but more and more in establishing the very rules of the spectacle… Is, however, the other side of this interactivity not interpassivity? Is the necessary obverse of my interacting with the object instead of just passively following the show, not the situation in which the object itself takes from me, deprives me of, my own passive reaction of satisfaction (or mourning or laughter), so that is is the object itself which "enjoys the show" instead of me, relieving me of the superego duty to enjoy myself… Do we not witness "interpassivity" in a great number of today's publicity spots or posters which, as it were, passively enjoy the product instead of us ? (Coke cans containing the inscription "Ooh!Ooh! What taste!", emulate in advance the ideal customer's reaction.) Another strange phenomenon brings us closer to the heart of the matter: almost every VCR aficionado who compulsively records hundreds of movies (myself among them), is well aware that the immediate effect of owning a VCR, is that one effectively watches less films than in the good old days of a simple TV set without a VCR; one never has time for TV, so, instead of losing a precious evening, one simply tapes the film and stores it for a future viewing (for which, of course, there is almost never time…). So, although I do not actually watch films, the very awareness that the films I love are stored in my video library gives me a profound satisfaction and, occasionally, enables me to simply relax and indulge in the exquisite art of far'niente — as if the VCR is in a way watching them for me, in my place… VCR stands here for the "big Other," for the medium of symbolic registration.
  • Marsha
    Hey! What happened to Timmy's comments? This is Web 2.0! Everyone's voice counts! Get hip and urbane and quit deleting posts!
  • Edward
    I totally agree with Marsha! Get hip and urbane and quit deleting posts!
  • Frank
    Ed and Marsha are right! This is Web 2.0! Stop deleting posts!
  • Wendy
    Does this sitet delete posts? Why would this sight delete posts? If this site deletes posts, that is wrong, because this is Web 2.0 and, if you're hip and urbane, you wouldn't delete posts. I agree with Marsha, Ed, and Frank. Don't delete posts!
  • Martin
    Nice job of removing posts, you censorous hack.
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