Sewer Monsters and Women Sitting on Curbs

Take a good look at the picture above?  I'm willing to guarantee you have never been to this location, but hopefully, if the photographer has done his/her job, you're able to "transport" yourself to this location and feel and relate to this place, even without having been there.

As it turns out, the photographer of this picture "The Sewer Monster" is photographed and processed by me, Andrew Gafford.  If I have done my job correctly, as Ansel Adams defines as, "a great photograph is one that fully expresses what one feels, in the deepest sense, about what is being photographed," you the viewer get the sense of childhood imagination, being able to see two eyes and a mouth in this drainage area.  Even though you have never experienced this spot like I have from my childhood, the photograph is meant to express that childlike wonder I felt when I first encounted "the sewer monster."  Like I mentioned in my previous blog, that is the power of the camera's product.  It transports the viewer to a time, place and feeling even though they may never have been there before.

Still from William Eggleston in the Real World.

Being able to feel transported is all well and good.  It certainly in the power of art, but how does using a camera affect the photographer?  My previous post looked at how photographs affect the viewer and their gaze, but the photographer's gaze in relation to the subject is different than that of the viewer and the subject.

Ulrike Gretzel's "Travel in the Network" describes the "tourist's gaze" as "the organized and systematized way in which tourists look upon landscapes, natives, historical sites and other objects of interest" (Gretzel, 45).  The article specifically looks at how using mobile phones affects the tourist's gaze, but it can directly relate to how the camera affects that gaze as well.  

From William Eggleston's Memphis, c. 1969-1970.

No photographer is more famous for his depictions of everyday, mundane subject matter than William Eggleston.  Take a look at the photo above.  If you're like me, you get a sense of this woman, her life and the time period in which this photo was taken.  I am transported.  But how is one affected when they are the one actually snapping the picture?


As Marshall McLuhan wrote in Understanding Media, "technologies used by tourists to gaze at objects frame the view, change patterns of perceptions and also create a barrier between the tourists and the objects of their gaze."  The Gretzel article argues that using technologies like cellphones in the experience of travel changes the experience from the real to the virtual.  The same can be said of using a camera.  Instead of actually engaging the surroundings, tourists will use their cameras to snap pictures of the surroundings.  This is a drastically different experience and is not a true engaging of the surroundings.  Photographer William Eggleston spent years in the Mississippi Delta, living and experiencing the culture and people of the area.  His photographs evoke that sense of a recreation of real life events and people.  Without this connection, the photographer falls victim to a false sense of reality, trusting the representation of space, the photograph, as the experience, rather than first experiencing the area in a real, engaging way and then crafting a representation of space.


The way I have used cameras, like in "The Sewer Monster," is through a deep emotional connection with the area, like that of Eggleston.  Contrast that against how our book describes the tourist's gaze.  Without any sort of connection to the place, tourists snap pictures of the area, claiming to have had an experience or connection with the place, when in actuality all they have been doing is hiding behind a screen and creating an almost meaningless representation of space.


The camera, particularly digital cameras, allows its users to quickly snap pictures, upload them onto a computer and then the internet, creating a web of virtual "experiences" without anyone ever having actually experiencing the real deal. What's important to remember when either using a camera of looking at photographs is this:  How is this technology affecting the way you view the world?  Trusting the camera and photos to experience life for you is problematic.  Always strive experience the real, not the digital or virtual.