(2) RELUCTANCES TOWARDS PHOTOGRAPHY
I never liked taking pictures. To me, it's almost a natural defense, which has its reasons in the heart of my own
foundations. It's been inside of me ever since I was born, in the mists of
my time. Of course there is a "cultural" explanation to this defense, and I have to try giving it some substance, by having an endoscopy of it.
Is it my Arabian, Muslim origins that make me feel suspicious when it comes to photography? Maybe there's something about it, since any representation of God is forbidden in Islam.
But I would like to go further than this first explanation, that is not always true, as I noticed it myself on a trip to Syria and Lebanon, a few years ago while I was accompanying a photographer. People, and especially children, had lots of fun when seeing photographers and they spontaneously asked to stand before the camera to be "shot".
Sometimes, after the shooting, some of them came back to ask for a present or money for their pose . But generally, I haven't noticed any reluctance towards photography itself in these Muslim Arabian people.
Therefore, what restrains me? Many reasons, related to my traveler, scientific research worker, writer status.
First, it's all about the movement. To me, life is movement and death is fixity, stillness, steadiness. It is in the movement the liveliness- that we regenerate, meet the otherness that changes the way we see people and, in return, the way we see ourselves.
Movement is fluidity, a journey, a human adventure. On the contrary, I associate fixity with plant life, supposed to remain in the same pot or territory. The human being, because of his amazing ability to move in space, has the supreme privilege of changing his "point of view", then improving his relation to the world.
By discovering the multiple distances of observation between him and his environment, he is able, gradually, to become more tolerant.
Movement is the experience of time. Men's ageing process slowly leads them to humility. Silence.
All of these explanations suggest me to say that, for a globe-trotter, I never took any picture. I still don't.
Photography is attraction, capture. The straight-jacket for emotions, splendors. Taking a picture is like picking a poppy. You break the stem and it?s over, you kill the beauty.
And there is the "burden" of the camera. A camera is a strain on me. It forces you to have a bag, or a shoulder bag ? of course I know there are compact cameras nowadays- and even to carry it across your shoulder with the strap around your neck.
That's where the shoe pinches: the thing itself prevents me from walking around, casually , freely, in the streets of the city. It
saddles me, in every sense of the word. If I think about this, I realize that what I'm actually trying to avoid, when I'm abroad, is to be "seen" like a passenger by local people because of my camera.
This thing bothers me because it's meaningful. It says I don't belong here and don't wish to, my camera and I are just passing by to take something, pictures of you and your environment, which we are going to bring back home and display. This interpretation does not square with the idea I have of my own representation in other people's space.
I always travel with a free hand, no camera, open to things and to people. I have the illusionary feeling to be more available for people, more attentive to them. And above all, I feel fully here. The camera coldly reminds me of the country I come from and to where I will probably return, even just to have my pictures developed.
With no camera and no film, I give a different meaning to my trip, my presence. I am totally dedicated to the local people, to meet them. I accept the risk of becoming one of them, of staying with them. Of staying there. Of never coming back to where I come from. This is what is at stake on a trip. It makes a person out of me, who can be completely transfigured by the others.
The real trip is the one from which you never return the way you left. We move on, is spite of everything else.
I always laugh when I see Japanese tourist groups, in Europe, who are meticulously circling a monument while shooting it frenetically.
Each one of them is equipped
with a camera, more or less bulky, more or less sophisticated. I laugh, but deep inside, I find it irritating. The relationship is one-sided. Unbalanced. It smacks
of factories and it immediately reminds me of those big Japanese brands which have tourists as ambassadors, sandwich-men in a way. I think they don't see the people around them, the Natives
, who are going about their daily business, and that's precisely what I like most to see when I travel. I don't see the "monuments", but only the people. The tourists I'm thinking of usually have the monument as their one single goal. The steady thing that fully dedicates itself to the picture. They shoot it,
box it, go back home, show the picture to their friends and say: I've been there. In the landscape of course.
The picture slots in between the locals and the visitors. When you take pictures like that, you don't speak, you don't speak to people. You don't need to meet the inhabitants, to learn their language, to understand them. The camera protects the visitor from the risk to face the otherness. It allows you to go back home totally spotless.
One exception: when the
visiting tourist get jostled by the native when their cameras are swiped by snatch theft, like people say in the robber jargon.
I saw many funny scenes in Naples. Then I start to appreciate the camera. It caused human beings to get in touch.
I don't want to draw a caricature. Having said that, I know that the photographers who take, on their own, pictures of people in public places have to meet them, talk to them, explain what they're doing, translate, so they can share with people. I know many of them...
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