Journey To The Centre Of The Senses

Recent experiences with a couple of old cameras

The road I parked the car on was once the site of a skating and boating pond. Today, it's nothing more than a side street. Nonetheless it remains a popular spot for walkers keen to enjoy a riverside stroll without getting their feet too dirty or straying too far from Aberdeen's metropolitan amenities.

Since my last post, the film I ordered has arrived. Five rolls of various 120 and 35mm film, both black and white and colour negative. After finishing a forgotten spool of Fujicolour 200 I loaded up my Rollei with Ilford Ortho 80 and my Voigtlander with Kodak Ektar 100 and set off round a small portion of the River Dee.

Up on the bridge, despite the noise of the traffic I felt myself settling into the place. Although the air shook as SUVs and lorries rumbled close to the narrow pavement I wasn't agitated. People pushed past laden with large bags of shopping, and while I could hear their laboured breathing close to my face I didn't find myself wishing for greater solitude.

This isn't quite what I was expecting. I had imagined that in order to feel any sense of tranquility, or to become what the wellness industry likes to call 'more grounded', I would have to escape the hubbub of the city. But maybe I'm exaggerating. A lack of agitation, no matter how welcome, is not a meaningfully deeper sense of psychological peace.

I had however noticed something. Rather than this unagitated state correlating to a more subdued sensory experience it was quite the opposite. I was both reasonably calm, and at the same time more sensitive to the sights, sounds, smells and tastes around me.

Fig 4. Exploring the banks of the Dee

I kept walking. Off the bridge and into the trees, along a rough riverside path, up onto another bridge busy with traffic, down to the grassy parkland on the opposite bank, then back to the car. As I sat reflecting with a flask of tea a women strode in front of the car staring into her phone. She quickly tapped the screen - a photo of the first bridge I'd been on - then a few more steps and another photo, a few more then another, never once pausing to take in the scenery with her own eyes.

I'd been a little thrown by my earlier experience of staying reasonably relaxed among the bustling weekend traffic, but this new sight reminded me both that I was on the right path and that I still had some way to go.

A few days later I took the same two cameras for another walk, this time to a nearby beach. Rather than head onto the large stretch of sand full of dog walkers and driftwood I split off the path and hopped down onto a secluded patch overlooking the mouth of the Don. I spent a few minutes absorbing my surroundings: the tiny lapping waves at my feet, the bird calls, a speeding motorcycle on the other side of the river, my own voice as I cheerfully (and a bit too loudly?) greeted a resting runner enjoying the view.

Fig 5. Voigtlander Bessa I

I shot a couple frames then paused and listened. Then a couple more, and another.

Continuing and pausing between each one to recharge my senses.

Contorting myself onto the sand I got a shot looking back over the river to the tower blocks on the other side. I thought about the similarity of the sharp grey rocks protruding from the sand to the concrete towers rising above the horizon. It felt good - a state of ground, body, and mechanical device all operating together. Unravelling myself I noticed I wasn't alone, and the connection was lost.

Someone in a long padded coat, thick wooly hat, large sunglasses, and even larger headphones was standing near to where I'd jumped down. I smiled. Nothing. At first I thought that like the woman from the other day she was just rushing through life. But this isn't quite right. Instead I was watching an attempt to experience real life the way it's experienced online; as a carefully curated chamber where little gets through that hasn't been algorithmically predetermined.

Her sunglasses kept eye contact strictly one-way, her headphones provided a soundtrack unsullied by traffic, bird song or conversation, her phone pointed only towards beautiful sparkling seas while carefully avoiding the plastic bottles and discarded beer cans jutting out of the dunes. She wasn't experiencing the beach, she was creating her own simulation of it. I imagined those huge headphones delivering a gentle playlist of ambient nature sounds.

The good sights, the bad sights, the good sounds, the bad sounds, nature in all its joy and horror evaporates into an anxious attempt to turn reality into a comforting social media feed filled with only the things that please us.

Of course I too was collecting, on film, my own version of the same little patch of sand. Not content with just being there, I needed my cameras as an excuse. It's not easy to escape a culture which socialises us to feel like we're either mad or bad for slowing down and taking it all in. For all its championing of consumers making rational choices in a free market, that's the one thing our capitalistic economy is least capable of handling. If we take the time to be in the moment and let our senses come alive we'd soon realise just how much of our humanity has been taken from us and make the rational decision to do things differently.

But for now the revolution will have to wait. Maybe the woman wearing the big coat, big sunglasses and big headphones knows something I don't. Perhaps all those sartorial defences are the very things helping her find peace in an unstable world. Perhaps my cameras are just as guilty of preventing me from engaging with the world as it really is rather than how I want it to be.

I couldn't help feeling though that despite the objects of mechanical reproduction slung over my shoulder, I'd had the slightly more humane experience of the two of us.