THIRDEYEJ[0]EL

It is as Alan Trachtenberg, distinguished professor of English and American Studies at Yale, accurately recapitulates, in his essay “Reading American Photographs”, that the nature of the camera carries with it an innate mechanism “bound to record nature in the raw.” 

The camera is just a device. Mechanical or digital, the fundamental principles that governs the mechanisms of image capturing is essentially the same. At the flick of the shutter, light that bounces off the surfaces of objects enters the camera through the aperture (an opening in which its size may vary, allowing different quantity of light to enter), reacts with the photographic film at the back (or in the case of digital photography, the ‘image sensor’) and thus forms a latent image. This latent image is then processed and developed into a visible print – very much like the operations of the human eye. The process is a scientific one and it is strictly binary. That which is present gets captured, that which is not does not. It is not within the capacity of the device to obscure the truth, to select which light to receive and which to not. Whatever the camera is pointed at it captures, it does not have a mind of its own. 

Taking a cue from James Agee: “The camera is just a machine, which records with impressive and as a rule very cruel faithfulness…” This “cruel faithfulness”, as Agee notes, is essentially this: when a photographer uses a highly light-sensitive celluloid, sets his aperture to the lowest stop (wide open) and sets his shutter speed to the slowest — in capturing an object in a brightly lit room — he’s bound to produce a white washed picture, or as the appropriate term goes: an “overexposed” picture. Thus here we see that when all factors are nullified — when the photographer doesn’t manipulate the relationship between the aperture, shutter speed and photographic film — the camera captures only the essence of sight: Light. This “cruel faithfulness” shows us that everything we see is nothing but a variation of light bouncing off objects. And if fundamentally this is what the camera does, how then does the camera lie? From this point of view, does it not suffice to say that it is not within the camera’s capacity nor is it within its nature to lie?

In “A Way of Seeing: An Introduction to the Photographs of Helen Levitt,” James Agee claims that “it is doubtful whether most people realize how extraordinarily slippery a liar the camera is.” However, unlike Marita Sturken, who in her essay “The Television Image: The Immediate and The Virtual,” simply accuses the “television [as having] a slippery relationship to the making of history,” or Christoper Phillips, who in his essay “Necessary Fictions: Warren Neidich’s Early American Cover-Ups” is quick at blaming “photographic image [as occupying] an increasingly unstable place in the systems which today generate cultural memory,” Agee however, was not so shallow as to immediately hold the “camera” as the sole culprit, guilty for being a “slippery liar”. Rather, he brings the role of “the operator” into perspective. In his words: “[what the camera records is] precisely what is in the eye, mind, spirit, and skill of its operator to make it record.” Stripping the many facades we coat the device with, in its essence, the camera is nothing but a tool; a mediator which has absolutely no control over neither input nor output. Just like any other mediums, it acts as a bridge that aids with the manifestation of ideas, translating them out into the material world. Thus, to call “the camera” a slippery liar is the tantamount to calling “the gun” a murderer; it is simply absurd. As Agee suggests, the line separating the camera from the operator, the photograph from the photographer is not so thin as to blur distinctions but rather, it is a thick line that conspicuously distinguishes appliance from applicator. 

Before I proceed any further, I believe it is crucial that I first answer this question: “In which level of truth am I talking about when I talk about ‘the truth’ and hence the obscuring of it?” It is without doubt that truth resides in many levels. At its basest, the camera is most effective at deconstructing the high value we place on “sight”, parodying the human eye to show how visual sensation is nothing more than the receiving of a melange of bouncing lights. To operate on this level of truth however will require the marginalization of the world into a dull plane of nihilists. At a higher level however, the singularity of “the truth” branches into infinite “isms”. These armies of intellectual pluralities such as, to name a few: absolutism, relativism, objectivism and subjectivism are constantly in an infinite struggle of subduing one another. In this scale from zero to infinity, my definition of “the truth” is essentially this: the reality of being. That is, since the camera is but an object in the world of “matters”, and its operations are strictly confined within this world, the capturing of the truth: the reality of being, can thus be interpreted as also the capturing of the existential material state of things. In other words, it is as the saying goes: “What is real is only what you can see.” Whether or not this “truth” shall invoke a higher level of truth that transcends mere materialism is a different story all together.

From this perspective, I would like to contest Agee, who in his essay freed “the camera” from blame of perjury and had instead, victimized “the operator”. And while Agee’s line of thought may well be an evolution of Sturken’s and Phillips’, whose prejudice was solely against “the camera”, I would like to further Agee’s line of thought by exonerating not only the camera, but the cameraman withal. Take the picture “Pak Lah Tidur” for example: what the picture shows here is nothing more than a figure that had, once in history, wore a red traditional Baju Melayu and a kopiah, placed (or had them placed) a cardboard and a file in front of it, and had its eyes shut with its pinky in its nose. Notice here that the picture, the product of the camera and the cameraman, is nothing but a display of facts: that that figure, an object, had once existed in history as clearly as the other objects surrounding it. Hence, at this level of truth, the central figure in the photograph is not a “he” but merely an “it” amongst the many “its”. The element of light, and its derivations such as “colors and shades” or the lack of them as reflected by the objects are all the viewers may ever extract; the element of “time and space” (how long did the figure shut its eye? What is the relative distance between the objects surrounding the figure?), or anything apart from that which is derived from the element of “light” (such as “gender”), the picture is unable to show. All it shows instead, is the plain truth that these objects “existed” upon capture. 

This being the case, how then can the camera and the cameraman plot a lie? If since the camera is only capable of capturing the existence of matters, the reality of beings in which truth is defined, how then can the cameraman make the camera not show this truth since by doing so is to NOT show the existential material state of things? (In response to any questions regarding the concept of partial truth, I stand firm with the fact that it is irrelevant since there is no such thing as partial existence). Thus, recapitulating a claim I had previously made: “it is not within the camera’s capacity nor is it within its nature to lie .” Expanding on a parallelism I made previously: just as it is in the collective nature of “the camera” to capture “light data” when operated appropriately, the destructive nature of “the gun” is solely for the purposes of murder or begetting damage; just as the camera cannot be used to uncollect “light data”, “the gun” cannot be used to give life. Thus, it suffices to say that given such a nature, the photograph (before any digital manipulation) is in all truthfulness, purely a sheet of “light data” that reproduces, very factually, the truth — the existence, or what I call the reality of being — of the objects it captures. For this matter of fact, the nature of the medium is essentially the reason why even if the cameraman wills the camera to lie, it can’t. In other words, the operator cannot be blamed for being a “slippery liar” because ultimately, there’s no such option for him or her to do so. 

“… the true meaning of life is to be discovered in the world rather than within man or his own psyche, as though it were a closed system.”

In part II of “man’s search for meaning”, Frankl highlights the disparity between the “will to meaning”, to that of Freud’s the “will to pleasure” and Adler’s “the will to power”. Following the quote above, Frankl goes on to claim that meaning in a man’s life, can only be found from without and not within his being; that to actualize one’s self is to actually transcend one’s self: “what is called self-actualization is not an attainable aim at all… [it] is possible only as a side-effect of self-transcendence.” This links back to what he said before, that “responsibleness [is] the very essence of human existence.” Life is not about reflecting deep within to conjure out meanings – for there’s only so much to look at inside – but rather, it is about seeing one’s self as part of a system ( a system we call “life”), and to understand one’s individually unique and distinct roles, our responsibleness towards the system and what the system demands out of us. It is not the other way round. In other words, one should have a mindset that says, “I am not accountable to myself; I am accountable to the world.” Seen from this light, it suffices also to say that a man’s meaning is what he makes of his life – the experiences he paints himself with, the people he frames himself with, and the sufferings he ages and inspires himself with. Forwarding Frankl’s philosophy, I see man’s existence, his being and the meaning which defines him, as no more nor less than that of a piece of canvas. We are but mediums, not entities. If a piece of canvas decides to look and explore it self, the information it is ever going to attain is perhaps the texture of itself, the conspicuous whiteness and blankness, and the tiny lines and threads that forms it. Of course a deeper analysis will also tell the canvas that the structure of its atoms may very well be different than that of a stone, or a piece of glass. Nonetheless, in as much as there are things to analyze and realize within itself, the spectrum is finite – the canvas will eventually only come to realize that everything it sees within itself, simply proves that it is no more than a piece of canvas. However, if that very piece of canvas decides to look not within, but without – to understand its purpose, and that is to have paint splattered on it – then the entire course of finding meaning takes on a totally different path. It is not itself anymore, but rather, the painting (or art work) in which it bears. When placed in a museum, viewers don’t see a piece of canvas; we see the colors, the subjects, the brush strokes – all the visual elements present by which the canvas bears. This way, the painter is then seen as Life (or luck… or God… whatever you may call it) and the act of the painter painting, should be seen as Life’s multifarious ways of ever so continuingly ‘painting’ us with conditions after conditions. Bad canvases tear easily, Good ones are able to bear the constant adding and scrapping of different paint layers; man who can never find meaning in the conditions that besets them crumbles, man who understands his purpose, bears his sufferings with dignity and pride, finds himself a testimony of his very own unique meaning in life – like the canvases that proudly stand in the museums, all the viewers see are paintings – paintings in which the meanings it hold, transcend time.

Joel finally has myspace.. and only one song in it I was testing it out my new toys!

Some mic, keyboard etc. Anyways, check it out at: myspace.com/joelstruly

First time using garage band.. kinda fun playing with it. Tell me what you guys think!