When I woke up this morning, for some odd reason, my mind raced back to my very first, virgin adventure overseas, to England, Ireland, Germany, and Rotterdam, in 1975, and what it felt like to have another first, a shiny Minolta SRT 101, in my hands.
Even though growing up, in an athletic, not artistic household, I had absolutely no art background, training, or life experience, to hold a camera in my hand, yes, even for the very first time, felt right, comfortable, agreeable, intimate.
The experience, didn’t, at all, feel like a foreign or unfamiliar experience, even though I had zero tech skills, at the time.
I think this might have had something to do with the fact that, by nature, I’m tactile and textural.
I get to know and appreciate things by touching and holding them.
Yet, on the other hand, without ever even remotely knowing the full ramifications of this unselfconscious expression of sympathy, empathy and affection, having and holding a camera in my hand, felt like I had grown a new limb, even developed a new sense, almost overnight.
That exact same sense of wonderment and amazement is still with me today.
The bodily and material way I feel about holding my iPhone camera in hand, is me perhaps, coming back, full-circle, to that terrestrial, earthly, first experience.
I’m pretty sure many of you will think this is weird but, with my iPhone camera in hand, I feel like there is some kinetic energy that connects me to this device, man and machine. I don’t really know what this is but I can feel it and see it in the pictures I take energy born and framed.
I’m sure that my sense and sentiments, about the romantic way I feel about my physical camera, isn’t probably much different than the way painters feel about their brushes, or sculptors feel about their stone, or potters feel about their clay, or artists feel about their chalk and charcoal.
These heartfelt and much-loved tools are extensions of creation. They have a life of their own. They are brimming with energy, potency, vibrancy.
If I were a warlock, the camera would be my magic wand.
For she is every bit as powerful. spellbinding, enchanting, divine.
And in my very hands, I can wield, over and over again, at every turn and touch, great acts of creation, conception, consumption.
Click.
Jack
