Happy Accidents of the Camera

Marshall McLuhan taught me that all of our tools were just extensions of our senses and our bodies.  Essentially the embodiment of a longing or inclination that we've always had.

Only like all wishes-come-true, they tend to give us a more realistic perception of the shape of our desires because they focus, clarify, reward, insist, repeat, demand, intensify...  They warp us in the fixated posture or gesture of that one longing that seemed elusive and then later lives a bitter taste.

The camera is no exception.  It enhances our vision and our memory and even our expressive capacity in ways that exceed our best longings.  And like every dream come true when it's limitations distort and pervert or mistake our vision, memory and expressive capacity, well then what?  It's much easier to blame the camera than blaming our ambitions and actions, isn't it?

But I have come to love the ways that the camera offers us gifts of sight that have nothing to do with our intent.  Receiving these happy accidents - whether of light, proximity, distortion, lens, movement - is sometimes a revelation.

If we treat the limitations of our tools like we should treat the limitations of our humanity - with humility and acceptance and curiousity?  Our limitations become a gift.

The happy accidents of the camera allow me to see a reality thats helpful and true and meaningful and not at all like the reality that I was stuck in.

#50thingsofvalue