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August 15, 2008
erasing the people
On our recent trip to Prague and Český Krumlov, we took lots of photos of places that are mobbed with tourists. Like everyone else, we would often wait until crowds parted a little to snap our pictures, showing either empty spaces or our own family, surrounded by old buildings. Other visitors sometimes politely stopped to allow us to shoot pictures without them in the frame.
All this bothers me a bit. We're erasing one another from our images, creating ghost towns out of crowded old cities and depopulating our natural wonders. It might be interesting to make a photo essay out of the tourists, or at least to write about their behavior in relation to the objects they observe. (I did a bit of that once in Madrid.)
August 15, 2008 10:04 AM | category: none
Comments
From Mark Sagoff via email:
The beautiful photograph that accompanies this entry should not bother you even a bit on account of its "erasure" of "one another," i.e. tourists. Your photograph resists the idea you propose -- that these historic buildings may not be what they are, emblems of the past, but something for us, something to gawk at. Your photograph, which is simple and compelling like a Utrillo, does not erase people but utility. "That the delight in an object on account of which we call it beautiful is incapable of resting on the representation of its utility, is abundantly evident ...," Kant wrote. What makes an aesthetic experience redemptive is its engagement of the solitary soul with its object. There are plenty of opportunities for exchange.
August 18, 2008 9:30 AM | Comments (2) | posted by Peter Levine
From Mark Sagoff via email:
The beautiful photograph that accompanies this entry should not bother you even a bit on account of its "erasure" of "one another," i.e. tourists. Your photograph resists the idea you propose -- that these historic buildings may not be what they are, emblems of the past, but something for us, something to gawk at. Your photograph, which is simple and compelling like a Utrillo, does not erase people but utility. "That the delight in an object on account of which we call it beautiful is incapable of resting on the representation of its utility, is abundantly evident ...," Kant wrote. What makes an aesthetic experience redemptive is its engagement of the solitary soul with its object. There are plenty of opportunities for exchange.
August 18, 2008 9:32 AM | Comments (2) | posted by Peter Levine