In 2007 my
family gathered to celebrate my 50th birthday. My nieces were aged 4
and 5. I bought them some inexpensive digital cameras thinking it would be fun
to see what kind of images they would create.
Unfortunately the cameras didn’t
take very good photos and it looks like we deleted most of them. But it was
really interesting looking at their photos at the time, and I did save a
couple:
I was reminded of these photos
by an article in The New Yorker about
the GoPro camera, “We
Are a Camera,” by Nick Paumgarten. The GoPro is a small HD video
camera with different mounts that can be affixed to all kinds of sporting
equipment. Mr. Paumgarten says an interesting feature of this camera is that
because it primarily points outward it’s a record of what an experience looks like…The result is not so much a selfie as a worldie. It’s more like the story you’d tell about an adventure than the photo that would accompany it.
The author’s son won a GoPro in
a school raffle, and
On a ski vacation that spring, he affixed it to the top of his helmet…Even though the camera was turned outward, filled mainly by the sight of the terrain sliding past, it provided, more than anything, a glimpse into the mind of a dreamy and quiet boy…I didn’t need a camera to show me what he looked like to the world, but was delighted to find one that could show me what the world looked like to him. It captured him better than any camera pointed at him could. This was a proxy, of sorts.
