My Broken Cannon PowerShot
Photos drenched in color, excitement, and wonder
Hey everyone,
I drafted this letter on a brown paper bag from Square Books. If that’s not a return to form, I don’t know what is. Here are some awful pictures I took with my broken camera along with a few reasons why I love them.
About halfway through my week at Camp Bratton-Green, I pulled my camera out of my bag to find a quarter of the screen smashed to pieces. I imagine that I flung the bag over my shoulder to get to an activity period, and my pen knocked into the glass. Or maybe I shoved the bag to make space for a camper, and the whole thing fell off the bench. Perhaps I ran a little too fast, and a bundle of unsecured sticks I had been collecting took the opportunity to attack the delicate metal.
The cause of the shattered screen was both all of these things together and none of them in particular. It didn’t matter; it doesn’t matter. I gently pressed the shutter release button, and a chorus of unusual noises poured out of the camera; one of those noises was clearly the sound of the shutter opening and closing. It took a photo! Or at least, I figured it took a photo. I couldn’t actually tell, as the broken screen rendered me blind to the camera’s inner thoughts.
Worst case scenario, I thought to myself, the camera isn’t actually taking pictures, and I’ll just have to remember the week with my brain. That’s a pretty good worst case scenario. I’ve never found digitally stored photos to be a trustworthy way to outsource memory anyway. Best case scenario, I reasoned, the camera is enjoying some time spent unobserved.
When I plugged the SD card into my computer, one thing was evident. Whatever was going on inside that camera was magic.
Let me be clear. I do have eyes and aesthetic sensibilities. I know this is a terrible picture. It’s poorly framed, awkwardly zoomed, and senselessly filtered. But I need you to scroll back up and take another look. Think about the randomness that was able to emerge when there was no way to exercise control over the camera’s settings. A child could have taken this photo; it’s reminiscent of my sister and me playing with our first camera on Christmas day. I remember being fascinated with all of the filters, drenching our photos in color, in excitement, in wonder of what we could create.
Camp is about rediscovering the part of yourself that experiments, that wanders, that collaborates and plays. It’s about finding the courage to try something when you lack certainty of the outcome, having the curiosity to see where an idea might lead you. Camp is a place where you have to let go of the illusion of control and immerse yourself in the moment.
I love this picture. I love all of these pictures. They’re clearly altered depictions of the world, refusing to capture a visual reality but succeeding to capture a spiritual one.
Thanks for reading! Here are some pictures from the camera before I broke it, in case you were curious.
Talk to you later,
Kendall
P.S. Kendall County is in summer programming right now, which means that I have a lot more time to write. Please welcome me into your inbox on a closer-to-weekly basis until school starts back in September!
