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Show 378 One trouble with Coleridge's lady was that she had no distance on herself. Further, she did not want the direct experience of Nature, but rather something which was "absolutely pretty." Like modern tourists who carry cameras, she wanted to limit her experience by a mediating influence, to convert it into an image or souvenir. Susan Sontag has recently pointed out that the twentieth century tourist is on essentially the same quest. Taking photographs, she argues, is. not only a way of certifying experience, it is also a way for the tourist to refuse it, by putting the camera between himself and whatever he encounters. Thus Coleridge's lady hid from her own possible disorientation by throwing a veil of words over the scene. But there is a deeper philosophical issue which Susan Sontag also lays bare. Again, her concern with popular photography, snapshots, indicates only that a twentieth century tourist has a more sophisticated technology available. It may not matter whether one frames a scene with one's hands or a camera; either way the observer is attempting to comprehend what he sees: Photography implies that we know about the world if we accept it as the camera records it. But this is the opposite of understanding, which starts with not accepting the world as it looks. All possibility of understanding is rooted in the ability to say no. |
