One of my earliest school memories is someone saying to me, "Take a picture, it last longer." How 80's is that?!
Who would have thought that all these years later photographic images would be used, and shared the way they are today. In seconds, I can send a picture of my kitchen table from Brooklyn to London and my friend has a real life, real time sense of my life. No big deal, right?
Everyone's become a photographer. The use of images has taken off in endless ways. It would be easy to say banal, but the more I see and think about it, the more I'm convinced that the most banal pics, often become small revelations.
Surely the pics on Facebook are the engine that drives the connection. But who am I to start raving about Facebook?I hardly use it. I'm beginning to see the light, and the great possibilities in connecting through photographs and the stories they tell us about ourselves. The photos do not stand in for life, the mark the life we are living.
The New York Times published a piece yesterday called 'First Camera, Then Fork.' It would be too easy to roll your eyes at the idea of people taking pictures of food and saying "Get on with it people. Put down the camera. Eat. Live." The NYT asked its readers to send in pictures of what they too were eating. Read the article, take a look at the pictures - you'll be sucked in. And don't forget to take note of the places these photographs are coming from - Sicily, Portland, Mexico City, Montreal, Dublin, Calcutta, Caracas - you get the idea. Its incredible when you really think of it. Being able to see what people are eating all over the world. And in vivid color. In real time. Right now.
Check out no. 342
Mathias Dopfner from Germany was on Charlie Rose Tuesday night talking about the iPad, and new media. His on-line newspaper Welt Die (The World) recently asked its readers to help create content by sending their photographs, and videos. The response blew their minds. Suddenly newspapers, magazines, blogs and other kinds of sites have an actively engaged reader that didn't exist 10 years ago. Now its up to the editors, journalists, and bloggers to creatively put this reader engagement to entertaining, useful, informative, and sometimes artful use.
I remember years ago reading Andrew Sullivan and in the mix of his commentary and occasional videos he would ask his readers to send a picture from their home. It was fascinating to see what other people woke up to. A simple idea. A big impression.
John Wenner, the founder and editor of Rolling Stone magazine said something that has stayed with me, and is the basis for MARK the magazine. "Revolution would come not through politics but through lifestyle. People would define their identities not by ideologies or political affiliations, but by music, cuisine, clothing, drug use, living arrangements, and attitudes." Break it down - HOW THEY LIVE.
One last point to drive this all home. The director and actor Simon McBurney said some very interesting things about watching theater that pertains to the collective sharing of photos, videos, and our written thoughts. When we recognize something of ourselves in what we see, or we learn something new that enlarges who we are, or we simply connect and exchange a piece of ourselves - something beautiful and important takes place. Here, read a bit of McBurney's thoughts on the collective experience in the theater:
The only reality of the theater exists in the mind of the audience. That audience looks collectively at what is going on on the stage and collectively imagines that this is real. ... But what is more fundamental is the notion that when everybody laughs together or, last night, when I heard people around me collectively sobbing, at that moment we are bound together not by our bodies sitting in the theater but by a collective imagination. At that moment we understand the lie that what we think is only our own, that our internal lives are only our own. At that point our collective imaginations become one imagination and my internal life becomes the same as your internal life, which is what Aristotle understood when he analyzed tragedy. It’s a collective act in which we collectively understand something about being a community together. The moment we understand that, feel it, we feel a kind of responsibility in which we must collectively help and take responsibility for each other. That is part of the definition of our humanity..." For full article go to 'An Expert In Audacity.'
If MARK is able to not only bring you points of view from our own contributors - but also create a community where gay men from all over the country, and world - share photos, videos, and thoughts - we can begin to enlarge the way we see ourselves, and be turned on to greater possibilities for living our lives. This will affect our relationships, our style, our homes, and yes what and how we eat. This excites me. Let me know what you think.
Photo: Troy Chatterton
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