photograph could ever approach.
Resentment, of course, is a symptom. We resent what threatens us. But in what sense was I threatened? It took me some time to realize that what I was arguing for—in some dim, unarticulated way—was the privilege of parents to make their own memories, to order and value and husband them in their own way. The resistance I felt when our neighbor slipped the cartridge into the VCR, I am convinced, was not unlike that felt by the Masai who until fairly recently would smash any camera aimed their way. The tape to me, like the photograph to them, was a transgression on a species of private property. I wanted to protect some sort of visual essence, to prevent an act of theft.
Rationally my response made no sense whatsoever. What was I doing except defending one representation of the past against another? Why draw the line at that particular point? In what way were the photographs in the garage superior to the videocassette in its neat cover, which I’d marked on the spine and slipped like a volume onto the bookshelf? I even had to admit to a certain ambivalence. Watching that twenty-minute tape, I’d experienced an almost supernatural pleasure. Whatever small resentment I’d felt had been overwhelmed at the time by a sort of dumb gratitude. If my neighbor had asked to make the tape beforehand I would have found a way to decline politely. Now that the thing was made, and mine, I’d fight like a badger to keep it.
That same afternoon I carried the cartons back from the garage. I piled them high in a bulky pyramid on the living-room carpet. It was time to unpack.
III
That the home-video library will eventually supplant the photo album seems beyond question. When have we ever been able to resist a new technology? Clearly, a new age—marked by a new relation to the past and defined by our love affair with the camcorder—has already begun. It would seem an opportune time to attempt to recognize the gains and losses. There are quite a few of both.
My case for the photograph is simple: I value it for its very limitations. We are drawn to the absences, the eloquence of what is not shown. This is true for two apparently contradictory reasons: first, because incompleteness invites the imagination (or, in the case of personal material, the memory) to play—to complete the gesture, establish the context, re-create the time and place and voice; second, because consciously or not we respect the humility and acknowledge the accuracy of the incomplete, the unresolved. Every photograph, every novel, every poem and painting carries an aura of mystery, a graceful reminder of our own mortality. And we do what we can to resolve that mystery. It is this dialogue—between things known and unknowable, between memory and death (for what is death but forgetting, writ large?)—that we chiefly love, that makes us human.
The camcorder, by contrast, offers the illusion of completeness; virtually everything—contexts, voices, background noises—has been provided. To all but the most jaded the result is a miracle of representation, but it’s a miracle that isolates us in the essentially passive role of observers. There’s nothing to do except watch and marvel. What we have before us is the moment past in all its eccentric glory—or at least this is what the video asks us to believe. But of course it’s not true. The camcorder does not capture the past; it is simply an exercise in mimicry raised to a higher level. Its success, its undeniable appeal, is the result of its ability to mask the spaces, to hide the gaps behind a more compelling, more seductive facsimile of what was real. The finished product, however, is no more “accurate,” no more objective, than the photograph. Both are acts of creative selection.
Every time we determine a border—whether around a photograph, a painting, or a frame of videotape—we are engaging in a more or less arbitrary act of exclusion. We decide what looks good, what
Resentment, of course, is a symptom. We resent what threatens us. But in what sense was I threatened? It took me some time to realize that what I was arguing for—in some dim, unarticulated way—was the privilege of parents to make their own memories, to order and value and husband them in their own way. The resistance I felt when our neighbor slipped the cartridge into the VCR, I am convinced, was not unlike that felt by the Masai who until fairly recently would smash any camera aimed their way. The tape to me, like the photograph to them, was a transgression on a species of private property. I wanted to protect some sort of visual essence, to prevent an act of theft.
Rationally my response made no sense whatsoever. What was I doing except defending one representation of the past against another? Why draw the line at that particular point? In what way were the photographs in the garage superior to the videocassette in its neat cover, which I’d marked on the spine and slipped like a volume onto the bookshelf? I even had to admit to a certain ambivalence. Watching that twenty-minute tape, I’d experienced an almost supernatural pleasure. Whatever small resentment I’d felt had been overwhelmed at the time by a sort of dumb gratitude. If my neighbor had asked to make the tape beforehand I would have found a way to decline politely. Now that the thing was made, and mine, I’d fight like a badger to keep it.
That same afternoon I carried the cartons back from the garage. I piled them high in a bulky pyramid on the living-room carpet. It was time to unpack.
III
That the home-video library will eventually supplant the photo album seems beyond question. When have we ever been able to resist a new technology? Clearly, a new age—marked by a new relation to the past and defined by our love affair with the camcorder—has already begun. It would seem an opportune time to attempt to recognize the gains and losses. There are quite a few of both.
My case for the photograph is simple: I value it for its very limitations. We are drawn to the absences, the eloquence of what is not shown. This is true for two apparently contradictory reasons: first, because incompleteness invites the imagination (or, in the case of personal material, the memory) to play—to complete the gesture, establish the context, re-create the time and place and voice; second, because consciously or not we respect the humility and acknowledge the accuracy of the incomplete, the unresolved. Every photograph, every novel, every poem and painting carries an aura of mystery, a graceful reminder of our own mortality. And we do what we can to resolve that mystery. It is this dialogue—between things known and unknowable, between memory and death (for what is death but forgetting, writ large?)—that we chiefly love, that makes us human.
The camcorder, by contrast, offers the illusion of completeness; virtually everything—contexts, voices, background noises—has been provided. To all but the most jaded the result is a miracle of representation, but it’s a miracle that isolates us in the essentially passive role of observers. There’s nothing to do except watch and marvel. What we have before us is the moment past in all its eccentric glory—or at least this is what the video asks us to believe. But of course it’s not true. The camcorder does not capture the past; it is simply an exercise in mimicry raised to a higher level. Its success, its undeniable appeal, is the result of its ability to mask the spaces, to hide the gaps behind a more compelling, more seductive facsimile of what was real. The finished product, however, is no more “accurate,” no more objective, than the photograph. Both are acts of creative selection.
Every time we determine a border—whether around a photograph, a painting, or a frame of videotape—we are engaging in a more or less arbitrary act of exclusion. We decide what looks good, what
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