I have been clicking away at wedding ceremonies for 17 years, never with flash, always trying to be out of the way, yet the camera does make a clicking sound. I never thought it would bother anyone. Well, it bothered me.
During my wedding ceremony (I talked about in the previous blog,) the room was small and the wedding photgrapher, my friend, was only about 15 feet away taking the pictures. As I surrendered to the vows, looking at my wife, speaking the words to her from my heart, we began to merge, two into one. My mind saw a gold ring and we were inside it saying our vows. I felt that we were in the center of the universe, which had fallen into a hush as we became one….except for the click, click, of the camera.
From my mind on the camera side I could feel the pull of objectification on our subjectivity. As we became one subjective experience, the camera’s presence was like a tether to my ego, not letting it go.
It was like someone watching you make love. It was like a child absorbed in his dance until the adult says “be careful” and snap, the spell is broken. It was like a teacher calling you out of a day dream. When we are without selfconsciousness, we are not even an I. We are just “being.” When the other eye comes in, in this case the camera, we become in “it” for the camera and we become an I, thinking about the camera and the self , another “it”, that the camera is seeing. What was whole is now broken. What was present is now in time.
Anyway, I resisted the pull of the camera on my consciousness, and I returned to our private embrace. Never again will I stand too close to a ceremony with my clicking, clicking, cold camera eye.
Posted under General Observations, weddings
This post was written by ed on December 30, 2005