there are things you cannot photograph with an iphone camera. its makers cannot embed a human eye in a metal frame, or generate a mind from silicon. the capitalists of silicon valley will never create a fleshless human. even their algorithms are parodic homonculi dumbly failing to anticipate whimsy. such creations are always tools, never individuals. a human draws humanity not from a mind, but from relations between mind and body, body and other, other and mind.
what, then, happens to the moonlight that is delicately striated by my window blinds? i point my third eye at it and i am blind. i put it away and sight returns: here is beauty draped over my wall.
i am a compulsive photographer, rather than a professional. my unconscious desires attract me to more or less the same things as in illustrations: clear lines, dense patterns, bold colors. my instagram displays the better results of this habit, but only scrapes the surface. most of the photographs i take are filed away mercilessly, never to be seen again.
the pleasure of these photographs is not their memorable qualities, or any intent of mine to review what i have taken. perhaps in the immediate afterglow i might stop to admire the emergence of beauty in this new object, retrace the lines and colors with my eyes. but it is the act itself that feels good. taking a picture, i steal false permanence from an always shifting world. chaotic ephemera is stablized into structure, pointlessly, endlessly. it is like building a cathedral which is governed only by math, not physics, and which stretches out endlessly into intricate wings and arches.
but what, then, happens to the color of light pollution glowing orange against the clouds? the warmth of an entire city, dimly reflected into my eyes. what happens to subtle beauties that my camera does not care about?
i suppose that’s what my keyboard is for
