I come to a new place or event, step out of the vehicle, come over to a crowd of strangers, pull the camera out and instantly become invisible.
(Professional ethics wouldn’t let me interfere or step into situations where I may do harm or affect the course of nature. I didn’t have to take the Hippocratic oath to become a journalist, but some of the training was similar in a sense of ideas and values.)
I start taking pictures, duck to get a better angle or try to find a spot that would allow me to see the site from a different perspective. And nobody questions my presence. I can walk anywhere and do I what I need to as long as my invisibility cloak, my big camera, is in my hands.
I’ve been around for some time already, so there are a few people in Estevan who know me, and I don’t need to introduce myself or acknowledge anything at all. But even if I'm a complete alien among strangers, the camera does its job.
That magic has been there as long as I can remember. If there is an impressive looking apparatus in your hands or on your chest, and, even better, if there is that professional trunk filled with numerous lenses on your shoulder, it doesn't take any effort to dissolve in a crowd.
Not only I become invisible, but also walls and doors disappear, so I can go anywhere without any extra questions. Sometimes people notice my presence, but it’s like a slight breeze or a draft. You feel it, check the surrounding looking for a source, glimpse at a door or a window and forget about it in a few seconds. It works the same way with a photographer (which in this context can be any person with photo camera in hands, skills don’t matter).
Sometimes, when I have the lens staring straight at someone for a second too long, the magic interference happens. All of a sudden people notice the camera. They don’t see it as is, at that moment they also get a dash of magic and instantly change becoming someone else, as if an invisible hand put a mask on them.
Now, instead of a loving and caring, but slightly tired mom through the lens I see a perfect smiling mother, one of those who manages to get everything done and always look awesome. Or instead of a closely listening friend, there is a confident joker holding thumbs up.
When noticed, I rarely see real people through the lens. Mainly those are the roles most of us play, take on or want to play from day to day.
It’s amazing what a great camouflage our professions become when it comes to social interaction. Try asking your adult friends a simple question about who they are. I’m confident most of them will first name their jobs.
Of course, we identify ourselves with our professions, but I also tend to believe that such simplistic answers come out first because of the magic interference that happens when there is a direct beam of attention cutting individuals out of the surrounding world and solely focusing on them (be it a camera lens or a direct question coming from a not well-known person). We put our masks on and play accordingly.
But we are much more complicated than what we do. So if working properly my black plastic invisibility cloak allows me to see and sometimes even catch the beauty, complexity and the inner light of others around me.
I’ve been in love with photography since being a kid. Have you ever been in the red room? For little me, it was the place where wonders happen, where a piece of paper on its own turns into a window showing pictures and telling stories.
The red room was like a chamber of secrets, where nobody could come in without a conditional knock. It was always quiet in there (I’m not sure why, but I used to believe that if I was too loud I would scare the images away and they would never appear on the paper). In the red room dad was an almighty magician and I was his student.
And the camera obscura? It was a real miracle. When we made a simple shoebox take pictures, I didn’t have doubts about the magical powers of photography.
It was later in life when I came across the invisibility cloak effect described above. Then I realized that besides the chemistry the camera has greater powers allowing me to see beyond the play we usually are a part of and into real, true people (or maybe it’s just our secondary or other underlying roles we don’t expose, I don’t know).
Now cameras become smaller and I’m not sure if the size matters when it comes to contemporary invisibility cloaks. I guess the time will show. But I sincerely hope there always will be a way to see people not masks. And it’s actually a lot of fun to be invisible.
