Buber 9

 

Measurement is never simple. To “how long have you been interested in photography?” I might answer, “always,” or “for a few years.” Both could be true. Picture as marker; photograph as marked. Picture as what I saw when I looked at the tree; photograph as the reflective bulb of sap hanging from Eucalyptus. My mother was glad she did not have a camera when she crossed the border into Scotland, saw sheep and a rainbow. But she remembered it as a camera shot. Or a not-camera shot that could have been. I remember missed photographs as well as those I bring home. Download: memory. Download: image. Whatever I see tracks through memory. See the color red, and I remember a red cap. See your room and I remember memorizing it. I suppose I could do synesthesia, too, on a double track of memory. Smell and sound both activate the past, so why not each other? Eucalyptus is the scent of my childhood, enveloped in Vicks. Vicks sharpens smell as the iPhone saturates its images. And iPhone also marks the memories of 12 years ago, as if they were my mine. They are mine, but not the ones I would have happened upon at my desk this morning listening to wind and birds but not (mercifully) weed whacker and leaf blower. I see an image from my past, but it’s an artificial goad. Years from now, Eucalyptus will pop up on my screen. Once the sentence “I see the tree” has been pronounced in such a way it no longer relates to a relation between a human I and a tree You but the perception of the tree object by the human consciousness, it has erected the crucial barrier between subject and object; the basic word I-It, the word of separation, has been spoken.

I see the image of the tree on my phone; I see the memory of taking the photograph in my head; I see the tree by way of the lens, which has no memory of its own. The photographed tree is an It, though I remember standing there with You, Eucalyptus, the camera as our witness. Camera didn’t speak when asked if there were reasons not to take the photograph. Camera was reverend at the revered spot. We didn’t marry; the insurance wouldn’t cover a tree-human union, especially after the recent wind storms. So we mumbled some vows, then took some selfies, the better to remember how young we were. We trust the camera, our teacher says, though increasingly we lie with it. To see is already to interpret, and to interpret is inevitably to lie. I didn’t know the origins of her sorrow until I asked.