Magritte Moments
Two weeks into the project and grabbing my camera as I leave the house is no longer an afterthought but a habit, which is good. That's goal one more-or-less accomplished. Goal two, on the other hand, actually getting out of the house, is taking more work. It's not that I don't want to, it's just that...well, have you been outside lately?
Spring is pollen-allergy season here and this year has been especially bad. Every time I go outside, I can guarantee a sneezing fit and itchy eyes for a couple of hours afterwards. And that's even with wearing a mask. Relatedly, inside my house is rather comfortable and there are no trees dropping their spore all over me. These two things together mean that actually leaving my house has been more of a challenge than I had anticipated. I suspect it will get easier as the weather continues to improve and my teaching semester starts. Until then, I think a few of the photos this week are a little perfunctory1. Such is life.
In the meantime, a technical issue has come up that has me thinking about how we see through cameras. The camera I'm using for this project, my trusty Lumix GX-1 is an absolute workhorse of a compact camera. It's what's commonly called a micro four-thirds, mirrorless camera. What this means is that the sensor reads the light coming through the lens and sends that information to an LCD screen mounted on the back of the camera.
I bought this camera in 2012. It is still functioning beautifully even after more than a decade of being banged around and treated to all manner of inconsiderate behavior on the part of its owner. Everything about the camera is holding up well, except for the LCD. Screen technology has come a long way in the last ten years which means that looking at a smartphone screen gives a much better, brighter image than the camera screen. Not to mention that the screen on the GX-1 is non-moveable, so it sits facing the top of the camera bag, which means it is prone to getting scratched and dinged all the time. As a result, it is getting harder and harder to actually see if I got a photographed lined up correctly, without any unintentional blurring, and with the right lighting.
By contrast, my non-digital, 40-year-old Pentax K-1000 shows me exactly what I'm photographing by simply letting me look through the lens. The way SLR (single lens reflex) cameras work is by putting a pair of mirrors between the viewfinder and the lens, letting your vision pass through the camera to see what the lens sees.
As the conversation in the zeitgeist moves around digital, generative a.i. technology and how it is becoming increasingly difficult to trust what you see on a screen, I'm having a bit of a Magritte2 moment and wondering just what, exactly, a photograph is anymore. Even here, in this newsletter, take an example like picture number three - the tree is not a tree. It's just an image transferred from my screen to your screen except for the brief moment when I was there in the park with the tree making it real. I think. Maybe.
Index:
8 March - Farming Season - These are nashi, Japanese pear, trees. They'll be blooming with small white flowers any day now and, come next fall, will be laden with delicious, juicy nashi. Seriously, if you've never had a Japanese or Asian pear, do yourself a favor...
9 March - Construction Season - There are new houses going in everywhere now that the earth has thawed enough to make construction easier. Before houses are built, small, square temporary shrines are built and the land is blessed by a Shinto priest. Prayer flags are hung from ropes that are strung around four young trees that make up the square of the shrine. Once construction begins in earnest, the shrines are taken down. I've still got a flag from mine tucked away in storage somewhere.
10 March - Branching Out - Here's the first of this week's crop of "you'll see this again" photos. This was taken at one of the riverside parks and, while it's a little cliche, I'm quite happy with it.
11 March - Shokubutsu - Every trip to the hardware store means stopping by the garden center and checking to see if they have any new succulents that we just have to have. Fortunately for my budget, last year's are still doing well enough that we haven't needed to buy any so far this spring.
12 March - Train in the Distance - It's hard to see, but tucked away into the far distance on the right hand side of the photo, you can see one of the bullet trains just leaving the station. The pink building down in the middle-foreground is a school.
13 March - Gold to Green - The thing about early spring is that the colors of the grasses and leaves haven't changed as much as the nature of the sunlight falling on them has. What was just a dull brown a month ago is now this golden color. Also, in the background on the left side, you can just make out one of the trees in the windbreak starting to put out tiny white flowers.
14 March - Cages - The little green box in the foreground is a cage that kids use to capture insects. Every spring and summer, you'll see kids in all the parks and forests chasing after beetles and other critters. I'm not sure if this box was placed here intentionally or accidentally left behind, but, either way, after this past winter, it's a little worse for wear.
I’ll leave it to you to guess which ones are which.
I think about Magritte’s The Treachery of Images a lot, and it’s what I’m referencing here.