Reframing


Dear Eugene,

There is no bad photographer in this day and age.

Or there shouldn't be any.

I don't know if you have a camera phone and had done this before: You took a picture without you knowing, pressed the screen by mistake as your arm swung.  And by the time you witnessed the result of the accident you said to yourself, Hey, that doesn't look too bad at all.

In fact, it was downright beautiful.

So I have a good phone, you said, with a good camera, high definition, great detail, automated luminosity balancing and color enhancement, all these, working together, and a fleeting, lucky happenstance.  You said.

I said.

What I failed to say is the (much) more obvious: That this world is just downright beautiful.  (And my camera just happened to call me out of my unawareness and forgetfulness.)

And if the result of my many "accidents" looks purposeless or meaningless or lifeless, all it takes is a little reframing, cutting off distracting elements from the edge(s), shifting the focus to call attention to where the eyes go, and there, a perfectly transcending, transfixing moment, captured by me.

God in action, and I saw it--More!  I got it!  There is no bad photographer because there is a good God; how more obvious can it be?

Yet the obviousness doesn't stop there.

It is also undeniably true and verifiably real that this beautiful world is often a very scary, uninhabitable, inhospitable place.  You can reframe and reshape your "accident" all you want but you won't be able to make sense of it, have peace with it, wake up every morning to greet it with even a reluctant smile.

Life is good, but not all is good.  Sometimes it is bad.  Often quite bad.  Feels like death.

"Maybe it's all utterly meaningless. Maybe it's all unutterably meaningful. If you want to know which, pay attention to what it means to be truly human in a world that half the time we're in love with and half the time scares the hell out of us," Buechner said.

Pay attention.  Pay attention to what it means to be truly human.  Pay attention to the One True Man.

I do believe there are bad photographs, and hence--or, more like, because--there are bad photographers.  Walker Percy said, "Bad books always lie. They lie most of all about the human condition."  So do bad photographs.

Did I contradict myself just now?  We are living in a contradiction, simple as that.  Sorry for being obvious.

If I am a photographer of any good, I should call attention to both the good and bad in this world, I should be aware of both the good and bad in my storytelling in frames.  I should seek to be honest and truthful about the human condition, first of all, in me.

I should leave myself wide open, vulnerable to reframing, to call attention to Truth.

Yours, Alex

Comments

  1. TimJuly 6, 2018 at 4:41 PM

    "Vulnerable to reframing..." So would we, perhaps, be helped in our reframing by (extra long) selfie-sticks? So that the picture we reframe includes us, though not necessarily dominating the frame... maybe even off in a corner, quite small, but there... not cropped/framed out? Gracing this picture of God's very good world, imaging somehow the Son? Thanks again, Alex, for your thoughtful reflection on "God in action," and each one of us caught up, somehow, somewhere, in that divine-worldly action.

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