This was originally published on my old blog BackpackBook (Livro de Mochila), a project that blended literature and travel, sometimes just traveling in my lucid dreams. It ran as âUma viagem vale por mil imagensâ on October 19, 2007.
Photographing and traveling are great company for each other. Beyond the stories other travelers told, the chance of taking good photographs was one of the things that pushed me to start traveling. Fortunately things have changed a little now, because after a few incidents I realized that while I was gaining photos, I was losing facts.
We were driving around the Urubici region, up in the Santa Catarina highlands, where we were handed incredible landscapes and almost perfect weather (we had been hoping for snow). After a few minutes looking at the Pedra Furada and the shapes cut out of the mountains, we decided that was enough of that spot and it was time to leave for new views.
As we were leaving, a thoroughly disorganized family arrived and started setting up a picnic. While the mother unfolded a big cloth, the kids, over their father’s objections, were already running off to throw the first stones and listen for them hitting the bottom.
I watched all of that in a few minutes, almost the same few minutes it took us to get bored of the view. In other words, the time it takes a memory card to record some good photos and for insatiable lenses to start wanting new landscapes.
The trip is nothing, the image is everything
Before we had even enjoyed the landscape and our friends, we were pulling out the cameras and trying to frame all that beauty, and if it wouldn’t fit in one shot then several clicks would do. Now take one of me with the rock behind, do I look good?
We were being enslaved by the need to record everything before we forgot it, or to prove to other people and to ourselves that we had been there. One more dot on the map.
That splendid place meant nothing to us. Going all the way there was about seeing it through the camera’s own lenses, so it could be “remembered” later among thousands of photos and videos. Images like those were probably what encouraged the trip in the first place. They’re powerful and attractive, but after all, were we there to enjoy the place or to take the same photo we’d seen on the internet?
The thing is that today the photo looks like one more picture from the internet, and sometimes I even question whether it’s mine. I also realized that a trip moves so fast that we end up never seeing a place without a lens in the way.
Living the trip
That family was there to enjoy a beautiful day, appreciating the landscape and each other’s company, talking, arguing and having fun. They were living in the place. We, on the other hand, were already far away and thirsty for new trips, “happy” to go home with our memory full of megabytes and no space left for experiences and new ideas.
I have to go back. Anybody up for a picnic at the edge of Morro da Igreja?
Don’t worry, I won’t ban cameras. I’ll just throw them over and listen for them hitting the bottom.
Only this once!