Should You Disappear: Photography, Presence, and the Things We Leave Behind

by Ty Alexander | 23rd September, 2024

Ever since I was a kid, I have had tremendous difficulty with goodbyes. All that I have ever loved–times and places, people and spaces–has been forever bid adieu amid embarrassing throes of kicking and screaming. The party can never stop, and there is always room for one more. However, the sad reality is that the party does stop, and the only truth that remains surrounds the quality of our now spent time. Am I taking a bow on a life well lived? Or was there a little more of myself to wilfully abandon in this life?

In January 2023, I had a relatively innocuous interaction with a person while taking a long-exposure photograph of the ocean. It was a warm and breezy evening overlooking Port Willunga Beach, just a few moments before last light, when a voice from behind me suggested that I “…remember to put the camera down and enjoy the moment.” After assessing the body language of the stranger, I determined that while misguided, they were most likely well-meaning. I chose to desert several of my choice phrases reserved for such moments and instead delivered them that smile-without-teeth usually kept for that annoying little dance you do with strangers walking towards you in tight spaces. What I could not move past, however, was the notion that someone other than myself knew the correct way for me to enjoy a moment. Why do I photograph? Is being nostalgic for things that are still currently happening anti-presence or the ultimate way to honour the things we adore?

What, then, is photography to me? If I were to try to put my finger on why the unsolicited statement bothered me so much, it would be that it implies that I do not know what I am doing or why. As if to suggest I am not as self-aware or self-realised as another and might be operating absent-mindedly or under some base impulse or set of undesirable motivations. Photography, to me, is one of the most inimitable fingerprints we possess with which we decorate, fragment and celebrate time. Photography is a powerful storytelling device, and no two of us will ever see or frame the same scene or subject in the same way twice. The unpredictability of the chemical miracle that is film and light moves and is as alive and full of potential as the artist who wields it.

In this sense, photography is truly the pursuit of the hopelessly optimistic and the recklessly in love. In his 1994 essay collection, Why People Photograph, Robert Adams states, “Art depends on there being affection in its creator’s life, and an artist must find ways, like everyone else, to nourish it. A photographer down on his or her knees picturing a dog has found pleasure enough to make many things possible” (p. 53). It is this affection and awe of the people and the natural world around me that I now cannot unsee, and I am intoxicated in its pursuit. Photography, to me, is the ultra-presence. An act of gratitude for this affection I have received, a gift that I make for those who are by my side presently, as well as one to leave behind for those who wish to know what I was like when I am gone. While I may know what drives me very well, I was still left to consider what one might consider ill motivation and what photography is not to me.

“Art depends on there being affection in its creator’s life, and an artist must find ways, like everyone else, to nourish it. A photographer down on his or her knees picturing a dog has found pleasure enough to make many things possible,” Robert Adams.

While I may be arguing that photography is indeed an act of presence, the comment from the stranger does force me to acknowledge that the art form requires one foot in the past and to recognise the ever-shifting landscape of the form. Susan Sontag writes, “Like the collector, the photographer is animated by a passion that, even when it appears to be for the present, is linked to a sense of the past” (On Photography, 1971, p. 77). Of this, a photographer might plead guilty, as it does take an acute sense of knowing how it feels to lose the aforementioned affection that trains our eye for the passing moment. What I think might be more likely at the core of the stranger’s sentiment is something akin to “look at all these young people wasting away on their phones”.

Once upon a time in the not-so-distant past, oil painters found photography blasphemous, then black and white photographers found colour photography to be in poor taste, then film photographers found the digital format to be beneath them; everything is always worse than it used to be to someone older who is invested in how it once was. It seems as futile to resist as the rising tide, and I am sure that the stranger and I might agree on many fronts. Photography, to me, should also not be strictly commerce, though through the advent of platforms such as Instagram - poised to capitalise on engagement minutes and the instant gratification generated by what I would dub “photography-adjacent content”- this seems unlikely to change for the better anytime soon.

“Like the collector, the photographer is animated by a passion that, even when it appears to be for the present, is linked to a sense of the past”, Susan Sontag.

While snooty, know-it-all purists will always endeavour to preserve the solitary act of the still photograph, money talks, and art does not pay the bills. Another possible subtext in the interaction with the stranger that I am willing to accept is that many desirable locations and subjects have become an influencer hellscape, and the delicate coastal towns and subjects I adore have become trash-ridden scenes of an Instagram drive-by. You need not look much further than the cries of residents on local news providers to see the real-world effects of such viral over-sharing. Endless footage of natural wonders on the brink of collapse so that tens of thousands of hurried tourists can get “the shot”. What a mess.

As for the future, I have high hopes. Young people are disconnecting at record rates, and there is a resurgence in the use of analogue film technologies; the ability to self-publish a product end-to-end has never been easier or more widely available to any inspired person. Theorists predicted a new Renaissance period of impassioned art to follow the global pandemic, and more of us are rejecting the algorithmic powers that be in favour of slowing down and creating art for art’s sake again. Just last weekend, while out on one of my photo drives, I encountered four young photographers, all loaded up like pack-horses, cruising around the wild, following their eyes wherever they led. I, for one, am looking forward to adding dozens of the resultant photobooks to my collection.

For now, I will settle on the couch with my copy of Henry Wessel’s House Pictures and remind myself where it all began, and why I even bothered to pick up a camera in the first place.

- T.A.

Working on a story, photo essay or project you'd like to share? We'd love to feature it in the Bright Side Film Lab Journal. Email your pitch to hello@brightsidefilmlab.com.