SIGHT UNSEEN catalog - California Museum of Photography ...

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II.
Inescapably, Sight Unseen questions the
sight of the sighted. Sight is so pervasive
and powerful that it makes us unaware of
our own blindness. Stated another way,
sight itself abets blindness. We see, and
III.
this is so strong that we think we under-
stand. Our minds are an internal Groucho
Marx: “Who are you going to believe, me
or your own two eyes?”
A central revelation of Sight Unseen is
this: photographers—commonly viewed
as specialized seers—are perhaps
the blindest people of all. The logic is
undeniable. Modern photography is the
easiest thing possible. Get a camera, put
it on automatic, and press the shutter.
The result: photographs.
What is the purpose, then, of
photographic training, toil, tuition,
assignments, critique, student loans,
graduate school, curatorial exercises,
photo museums, carefully staged
exhibitions? British photographer
Terence Donovan puts his finger on
it: “The real skill of photography is
organized visual lying.” A convincing
lie takes practice. Photographers,
therefore, internalize a lengthy set
of conventions: traditional subjects (or
rebellious countermoves), suitable
Douglas McCulloh
angles, appropriate lenses, depth of field
choices, proper color balance, correct
compositional techniques (and vague
countermoves), geometric balances,
effective crops, ephemeral gestures,
decisive moments. The list is—click by
click—a successive ratcheting down,
a narrowing of vision. It is, in fact, a
progressive blindness.
Compounding this, we live in a visual
era. We are so inundated with images
that we use them to build our world.
Photographers, consequently, inflict their
blindness on us all. Their blindness has
become a contagion.
Professional
photography is thus
a strange priesthood
that floods the world
with images moving
and still. People
trust the priesthood
to provide sight
(and possibly even
vision), but it offers
blindness. This is
why travel is such
a shock. Pick any
iconic place and visit. Compare image
to reality. The Roman Coliseum? It’s a
Golden Gate Bridge
remnant stranded in swirling Roman
traffic. Disneyland? The photo version
is a happy, ethnically balanced group of
children posing with Mickey in front of
the castle. The reality is largely concrete,
crowd control, and people lined up to buy
things.
In the meantime, cameras proliferate.
Photography is consciousness in its
acquisitive mode, writes Susan Sontag.
As such, it’s the perfect technology for
an acquisitive populace. In late 2008,
Facebook crossed the threshold of serving
up 15 billion photographs per day. “To
celebrate,” said Facebook engineer Doug
Beaver, “we got a bunch of cupcakes and
handed them out to our engineering and
operations groups. One of our engineers
calculated that if we had gotten one
cupcake for each of our photos, and lined
them up side by side, the line would reach
halfway to the moon.”
Questions arise. How can so many people
photograph so much and show us so little?
Can the deluge of photographs depict
everything and reveal nothing? Has the
actual practice of photography—in truth
an amazing means of acquisition—been
confused with seeing? Are we sighted,
or blind? Photographs are the keystones