Learning to See*

A friend tells of when he took his first photography class in college. The instructor opened the class with the following advice: "Now that you have your cameras and your pass to the dark room," he said, "go ahead. Get all of those sunset-at-the-beach pictures out of your system. Take all the cute puppy and baby shots you think you need to take. And when you've done one too many of your sunsets. when the forth or the fifth one starts to feel old, come back and we'll discuss where your pictures are going to be found. We'll start talking about seeing."

My friend's teacher noted for them that the history of photography is bigger than what we find in the greeting card stores. Some photographers have shown us the Grand Canyon, of course. Others have shown us social injustice and labor conditions that should be changed.

But he was also used to new students all seeing the same things, and this sameness came through their pictures. These we call cliches. There is probably some deep reason why cliches stick around. Probably they emerge from the same community well that most commonplaces do. But as this teacher was saying, for any who would listen, the difference between the casual tuourist with a camera and the photographer comes down to this: The tourist gets the camera out only on a trip and sees only what has already been shown to her; the photographer sees what is there, which is always more than what has been shown to us. One follows others' visions; the other has learned to see.


 *This blog is from Pretexts for Writing, page 114.