ריבוי נראטיבים

Diverse Narratives

Barry Chazan

Cameras

The invention that has intrigued me most is the camera. To this day, I do not understand how it works, but I think it is a magical invention. Things are out there—in space, on the street, or in the house—and by pushing a button on a once rather bulky, now svelte black or silver box, that thing can be transferred onto a piece of paper or computer screen. Tooth fairies and superheroes may be stretches of the imagination, but a camera with its diverse lenses seems to be the ultimate miracle. I once met the remarkable photographer, essayist, and teacher Susan Sontag, who explained that photography is as much about the person taking the picture as the picture itself. A photograph depends not so much on the thing out there, but rather on the person holding the camera, the spot where he or she is standing, and the angle from which he or she is shooting. The educationist Parker Palmer has said,

We cannot see what is out there by simply looking around. Everything depends on the lenses through which we see the world. By putting on new lenses, we see things that otherwise would be invisible.1

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