Growing up in the millennial generation, I have never been shy of the camera. In fact, it was my generation that started the concept of the “selfie.” Whether it is through Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, or any other form of social media, not a day goes by where I am not documenting some facet of my life. To a certain degree it almost doesn’t even matter whether the picture is of me or the food that I am consuming, rather what is important and valued in society today is that I’m being active on social media by uploading pictures and sharing moments of my life with my followers. Susan Sontag captures how generation “Me” looks at photography in her piece On Photography where she argues that “….a photography is not just the result of an encounter between an event and a photographer; picture-taking is an event in itself, and one with ever more peremptory rights- to interfere with, to invade, or to ignore whatever is going on.” This statement couldn’t be more accurate for the world that we live in today. With the use of geotag, it seems like we almost go to certain places just so we can take a picture and upload it for the world to see. No longer is an event accidentally documented or one of those “Why don’t we take a picture while we’re at it,” but it’s more of a “Let’s go here and take a good picture.” Sontag goes on to argue that pictures are documentations of moments- moments that last when we are all gone. It is these moments that will bind us to our youth when we are old and to our families (kids and grandkids) when we have passed. It seems almost as if the picture itself is not important, but the act of taking it is what now takes precedent. A perfect example of this is our graduation photos; the photo itself or how we look isn’t what is the most important but it’s the fact that we were able to capture that moment in time and every time we look at that picture, our mind will remember it as an event (what happened that day, what went on, memories, etc.).
Our culture today is one that is obsessed with capturing the moment. It doesn’t really matter if you were at a concert and got to meet the artist backstage if you didn’t document it. Just like the photographers who documented the Vietnamese bonze reaching for the gasoline can, we too are more focused with capturing the moment than being a part of it. I mean after all, how could you do both? Be in the moment and capture it at the same time? Our generation has said fuck it to the moment and instead chosen to value the art of capturing it. To an extent this reality is worrisome because it places us in a much more passive role than before and it is only in moments when a society is active does it grow and get better. I guess until then, I’m just going to scroll through my camera roll to find something Insta-worthy. After all, this is a generation that prides itself in that.
Our culture today is one that is obsessed with capturing the moment. It doesn’t really matter if you were at a concert and got to meet the artist backstage if you didn’t document it. Just like the photographers who documented the Vietnamese bonze reaching for the gasoline can, we too are more focused with capturing the moment than being a part of it. I mean after all, how could you do both? Be in the moment and capture it at the same time? Our generation has said fuck it to the moment and instead chosen to value the art of capturing it. To an extent this reality is worrisome because it places us in a much more passive role than before and it is only in moments when a society is active does it grow and get better. I guess until then, I’m just going to scroll through my camera roll to find something Insta-worthy. After all, this is a generation that prides itself in that.