Arbus and Reflection

Diane Arbus said about photography "The process itself has a kind of exactitude, a kind of scrutiny that we're not normally subject to. I mean that we don't subject each other to. We're nicer to each other than the intervention of the camera is going to make us. It's a little bit cold, a little bit harsh."

Now I may take issue with her claim that humans need cameras in order to subject each other to harsh scrutiny or cold exactitude or any combination therein, but that intervention is something I felt today.

Earlier, while walking around some ravines with my father and our neighbors, Carl and Frank; Frank kept ending up at the end of the group. So did I. There were dappled shadows caused by the oak trees and small inclines that I couldn't help but be drawn to compositionally when Frank walked slowly down them in his straw hat. But I wasn't talking to him. I didn't ask him if he minded his picture taken. I was running about, climbing trees and scurrying up gravel hillsides to find my preferred vantage point. I wonder if I missed the larger human element by shutting up and talking with my lens.

I felt that coldness. It was a documentary feel, as if I wasn't truly there taking the picture. Almost a feeling of being inside the camera, an invisible being responsible only for examining light and aiming for the most interesting frame.