"Even the camera itself can be a barrier to seeing, in at least two ways. Susan Sontag, in On Photography, describes the first one: 'A way of certifying experience, taking photographs is also a way of refusing it -- by limiting experience to a search for the photogenic, by converting experience into an image, a souvenir.' Making pictures can be a substitute for seeing and participating. The person who sees is involved, the person who looks is not.
The camera is also a sight barrier because it does not see as the human eye does. We see a scene or situation in terms of both our senses and our experience. . . . [S]ince a camera has no experience, it cannot select, so it records everything in its field of view. Its memory is perfect. . . . [A] person abstracts, a camera does not.
. . . [T]hey are often surprised to find that the scene the camera saw is not what they saw, or more precisely, not what they thought they saw. A major challenge in using a camera is learning to control it (and other tools and techniques) in order to produce a picture that shows what you perceived.
Except for the optical differences between the camera and the human eye, all barriers to seeing are related to the first one -- preoccupation with self. . . . . [W]ithout closing our eyes to the remarkable world around us."
p. 12
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