14 May THOUGHTS ON LOOKING AND SEEING
I have never blogged before and I felt lost for words this morning until Mia showed me an excerpt of writing by John Steinbeck that resonated with me. So, I will let Mr. Steinbeck’s words start my first blog:
It occurs to me to wonder and to ask how much I see or am capable of seeing…
Some Years ago, the US Information Service paid the expenses of a famous and fine Italian Photographer to go to America and to take pictures of our country… The man had travelled everywhere in America, and do you know what his pictures were? Italy. In every American city, he had unconsciously sought and found Italy. The portraits–Italians; the countryside–Tuscany and the Po Valley and the Abruzzi. His eye looked for what was familiar to him and found it. This is interesting as an incident, but I think we all do it. This man did not see the America which is not like Italy, and there is very much that isn’t. And I wonder what I have missed in the wonderful trip to the south [of Israel] i have just completed. Did I see only America? I confess I caught myself at it. Travelling over those breathtaking mountains and looking down at the shimmering deserts, cut to wadis by the occasional flash floods, I found myself saying or agreeing–yes, that’s like the Texas panhandle–that could be Nevada, and that might be Death Valley. The frightening thought…is that they weren’t andy of those places. They were themselves. But by identifying them with something I knew, was I not cutting myself off completely from the things I did not know, not seeing, not even recognizing, because I did not have the easy bridge of recognition?
This is a serious thing and it extends in many directions. Because we do not use quarter tones in music, many of us do not hear them in Oriental music. How many people, seeing a painting, automatically dislike it because it is not familiar? And, most important of all, how many ideas do we reject without a hearing simply because our experience pattern can bring up no recognition parallel?
I took the picture above of the kids playing in the ocean in the French Polynesia, along the coast of Raiatea Island…but the image could have been from anywhere. I realized that, like Steinbeck in his trip to Israel, I was guilty of seeking out the familiar.
The scene of the kids swimming in the water reminds me of my childhood in the Philippines. I could be any of those boys jumping in the water. In my search to find something different, I unconsciously found the familiar. Coconut plantations just like in my hometown, fishermen fixing their nets, families in the water, men gathered under the trees–these are the images I took. Granted that Raiatea Island, the whole French Polynesia has a lot of similarities to the Philippines, it is not.
But is that really bad thing?
Aren’t we suppose to photograph who we are, to be personal. One’s work should be a reflection of oneself.
But I think Steinbeck is talking about experiences. To be open to all of them, specially to the unfamiliar.
The danger is when we start dismissing experiences that we do not identify with and that would be death for a Photographer.
Cedric Angeles
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