congeries

"Let me try this paradox on you: that with so much to see or notice (and noticing is the humane version of seeing - it is a camera with warmth; it is realising that "I am a camera" is a way of abandoning responsibility), the 'visual' does not have to be hammered into our consciousness.

"We can see life first and the nature of the shot second. To illustrate: do you see how often it is the shot (the fateful composition) that registers first in, say, Hitchcock, Kubrick and Lang, whereas it is the life or the light or the situation that impresses in Renoir, Ozu and Rossellini?

Do you see how far this is a model for the gap (of vivacity and doubt) between a computer-generated shot (always foreseen before it is seen) and a photographed, reactive shot - the kind that occurs whenever someone says, 'Oh, look, do you see that...'?

For what that kind of seeing amounts to... is that noting carries responsibility, attitude, history and context, whereas mere seeing (the mechanical thing) can be as warm or as cold as the mind working the camera.

And if that mind is intent on effacing itself before the superb 'truthfulness' of the camera, then beware of that mind. It is too cold for comfort." Come and see.