The unobserved Life

May 4, 2010 by pmelcher.

There has always been a major obsession in our lives. From prehistoric times to today, we have feared the same demon.  We have crafted a lot of fixes and patches but it has been really recently that we have seemingly find a cure.

A sense of definition.

This demon we live with is the constant fear that we might be living useless lives. Lives that start on a birthday that we celebrate year after year until we perish, leaving, seemingly, nothing behind. We have struggled and we are still struggling to find meaning in everything we do, however trivial. Since we are incapable of defining what a meaning would be, we leave it to others to define it. After all, what better way to give depth to something than having it seen by others. Same goes for our lives.

Enters photography : For the last 150 years, it has made many, many lives meaningful. Not only by making lives finally visible by others , but making the lives of those who photographs them, meaningful. It would have been incredibly hard for Gandhi, for example, to have made his life, and his actions meaningful without photography. His force, his presence was made a lot stronger, and effective, thanks to those photogrpahers that brought us the images of an almost naked frail old man defying the biggest empire of the time. But this is a bad examples, as Gandhi’s life and action always had a meaning.

What about the middle management, married, one kid man around the corner from your house. He is living the simple regular life, the one made of 8 hours labor days, busy house keeping week ends and sometimes  interrupted  by the common tragedies (death, unemployment, sickness, loss). Where is the meaning of that life?

Nowhere. Until it starts getting more dimensions by being photographed and seen. Photographed by friends, family, passer bys and ending up on Facebook, Flickr, Twitter. If any of these images goes viral, a simple ignored life becomes suddenly highly meaningful. Never mind that the meaning might be puerile, it is still a meaning.

Photography has put an end to the dreadful unobserved life. Probably for ever. What started as simple drawings in a cave somewhere in the South of France that said “look, I am here and I did this” has evolved to today’s ” Look at me, I learn to jet ski during my vacation” photograph ; I exist.

In between Gandhi and your neighborhood, there are thousand upon thousands of lives that suddenly spring into meaning because and only because of photogrpahy. That man in front of the tanks in Tiananmen square, the  monk that burned himself in Vietnam, that other man holding his bandage as he walked away from the London bus explosion. Or that woman who held her baby after an earthquake. or even Paris Hilton ? What would be the meaning of her life without photography ?

Fear no more the darkness of oblivion, photography is here.

In the cacophony of individuals screaming for attention and thus justification, some have even taken photography to yet another level. It is no only who they photograph who’s life become amplified, it is also themselves. Its not longer “look at me, I exist”, but rather, “Look at me  looking at others, I exist”. This has lead to everything from a variety of extremely brilliant photographers to a pool of highly pretentious narcissists.

Regardless, what we have let quietly slip into our lives has now become the primary form of “existence justification” for all of us, something unthinkable . The question now, as the cries for meaning increases, how do manage it?

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