This weekend while I was at a concert in LA, I couldn't help but be aggravated by fifteen people holding smartphones above their heads and obscuring my view...
Given I am a hypocrite in this matter, as photographing of events is often my favorite method of remembering them. Susan Sontag addresses this very phenomenon in On Photography, "After the event has ended, the picture will still exist, conferring on the event a kind of immortality (and importance) it would never otherwise have enjoyed (Sontag, 11).
Sontag is dead-on in this assertion, as the modern human relies extensively on social media and photography for self-reflection. An event without photographs may fall beneath the cracks when compared to another that is well documented. But in some ways the act of photographing, and being in that state of "non-intervention" that Sontag describes, removes one from the very event they are experiencing. I will unfortunately have to halt my wild dancing at a concert in order to snap the perfect shot. I recall those filming the concert on the phones appearing motionless amidst the chaos of the crowd. Is it better to truly experience an event, or have the proof to validate it subsequently?
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