If We Don’t Photograph It…
Did it really happen?
I like to watch webcams (you knew that) and one of my favorites is in the Dorsoduro, one of the six sestieri in Venice, Italy.
There’s something fascinating about watching people just going about their business and once in a while catching them doing something really weird.
For example, one night I had another Venician webcam on as I noodled around doing some other things when I happened to glance up just in time to see two young, probably drunk, men take off their shirts and jump off the Rialto Bridge. I couldn’t believe it. Ok, not probably drunk. Definitely drunk.
Recently, I saw a couple wandering along the canal in the Dorsoduro webcam and stopping to embrace or gazing at each other while holding hands. The curious thing was that there was another woman with them who was apparently their own private paparazzo. They’d strike a pose and she’d take a photo with her very professional-looking camera. At one point, I expected him to go down on one knee but that didn’t happen. I watched as they moved out of sight with their photographer documenting their every fond gesture.
Experience vs documentation
I’m not pointing fingers here. I’d be as guilty as anyone of this constant photo-taking of our every meal or move except that the camera in my three-year-old Android phone isn’t all that great.
But watching that couple in Venice and recently viewing an incredibly expensive, beautiful, professionally-produced video of a good friend’s wedding I find myself wondering if we can have a meaningful experience anymore without documenting it. We came close to doing so when we got married in Reno in a drive-thru wedding chapel but even then we had to get some photos. I mean, come on, Reno. Drive-thru wedding chapel. Please!
So maybe if we don’t document the event it’s somehow not, I don’t know, sanctioned? Real?
Lasting?
I have to admit that I’m glad we did take a couple of snaps that day in Reno although hiring a personal photographer to capture the “magic” seems a bit much. It strikes me that these are the kinds of things humans do after they’ve managed to outlast four-legged predators and can keep food on the table. And who am I to cast the first stone?
It’s not as if anyone else really wants to see these things
The only people remotely interested in those giddy happy photos taken in the Dorsoduro that chilly day in March 2020 are the people in the pictures (although their friends will pretend to like looking at them). I mean I had to write this piece just to get someone else to look at our giddy happy photos! And months and years go by without us bothering to pull those photos up for a looksee.
That said, we’ve got some awesome pictures that we took on our trips to Iceland and then to Spain and Portugal not to mention all those amazing pix and videos from our repeated trips out to Burning Man. We have been known to cue up a slideshow of one or more of these trips and wallow.
So maybe my friends in the Dorsoduro will do the same. Maybe when they’re celebrating their third, ninth, fortieth anniversary they’ll cue up those babies and wallow.
I hope they do!
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