I have spent the past 11 years involved in different kinds of meaning-making through the production of images, and the previous 5 engaged in the study of art history and visual culture; these 16 years happened to be situated at a time when the Image in general and our cultural relationship to photography in particular has undergone radical changes; as such, I'm fascinated to watch Clio's relationship to the camera.
When I first worked as an Art Buyer in 1997, the internet was still primarily a site for computer geeks and the porn industry, and cameras functioned on film. Producing images required time, money, and technical skill. I remember thinking that I could never be a photographer because I'm too much of a control freak, and with film, you never know until it's developed whether or not you got your shot. At that point, the set is dismantled, the models have gone home, and it's truly too late. I also remember one still life photographer who invested in a high-end digital camera in 1998 or 1999, spending about $30K but reaping the rewards of being one of the few shops in town that could produce images quickly with confirmed, accurate results. Fast forward ten years and everyone owns a digital camera the size of a wallet and images can not only be produced instantaneously, but they can be disseminated in moments through a phone's wireless connection to the internet. (As an aside, I am still generally blown away by the technological mystery of fax machines.)
I hand wrote my term papers as late as senior year in high school and laid out yearbook pages with actual photos trimmed to size and glued onto graph paper. Clio already requests to see photos and type letters on the computer. This is not a new story, but it is one I still have a hard time comprehending. I always say that our interns are of a generation light-years ahead of me in terms of their comfort with and use of technology; what of my daughters?
In a way, Clio's relationship to the camera may have less to do with technology and more to do with the general narcissism of being two. But I wonder what early theorists of the photographic image, like Roland Barthes, would say about my ability to thwart a tantrum by taking its picture?
Here's Clio, throwing a tantrum because I wouldn't let her climb up the slide.
Rather than argue, which wouldn't do anyone much good anyway, I simply took her picture. "Let me see," she said, and came over to the bench where I sat to look at the evidence of her bad behavior.
And I showed her.
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