Having a small dog like Gus still seems strange to me, I keep doing a double-take when I see him sitting so proudly next to Red or Gus, who sometimes look at one another in wonder, the same way I do. What is this strange creature doing here?
I’ve been writing online and about the Internet for more than half of my life now, but social media has changed everything. This new culture, this new way of interacting with the world never ceases to confound and amaze and challenge me.My latest encounter with the new world of Facebook and creativity are the photos I’m taking with my new lens, Lomography’s Daguerreotype Archomat.
The photos taken by this lens have been the most popular photos I’ve ever taken, by far the most successful and I am proud of that and happy about it. . One of the first, The Blue Heron, was offered for sale as a signed limited edition, it sold out in a few days. The second photo I offered for sale, Farm On Route 67, has sold more than a dozen prints since Monday. That is an open edition.
That means I have sold more than 60 of the Achromat photos in just a few days, an all-time record in the happy life of my photography. And I have gotten more praise than I have ever gotten for my pictures. I am grateful.
In the past week or so, I’ve also gotten another kind of response, and it says a lot about how social media is transforming our dialogues with one another.
At least a dozen people have messaged, e-mailed me or messengered me to tell me they don’t like the photos, they seem too soft for them and 10 of those people so far say the photos are hurting their eyes when they look at them.
This is one of those rare occasions when I am speechless, at least temporarily, and amazed at how new information technology has affected people like me and so many other people with whom I interact and share my work with.
As someone will undoubtedly point out to me, when you share your life and work in America, it is widely believed that you give up the right to be treated rationally, or even civilly. I truly don’t mind constructive feedback or criticism, I get some every day of my life. But once again, we are in a new realm, boundaries everywhere are being overrun and obliterated in the new kinds of conversation we are having.
The idea that photographs with a softer feel and focus is damaging to one’s eyes is a strange thing for me to grasp. “I have eye strain and it hurts me to look at the photographs you are taking with your new lens, I don’t like them at all,” said one of the first messages.
Another very civil person posted this message on my Facebook Page after I first wrote about this budding controversy: “Some of the prints that you have taken do bother my eyes, some don’t.. I don’t consider that controversial. It’s mostly due to one side of my head processing movement 18% slower than the other side. (Nothing can be done until 20% is reached). It is what it is. Nothing against the photos. I actually like them both. Just can’t look at the for long.”
I tried to explain that when someone tells me my photos are hurting their eyes, that certainly is controversial, at least for me. This is a whole new realm to comprehend. And why was I hearing about her eyes at all?
Another messaged me on Facebook (soon, I will disable Facebook messenger, I think) to say “I don’t mean to be critical, but i really hate your new photos with your new lens. They make me wince and tear up.”
A man wrote me from Portland, Oregon to say he thought the new pictures might be causing his migraine to return.” Perhaps, he suggested, I should go back and find some of my older photos, pick some that I liked, and sell them ( and stop playing with these silly new toys).
Dorothy wrote to say as she got older, the world looked more and more like my soft focus photos, she hoped I stopped taking them soon. It bother her to be reminded of her aging process.
I am not at all sure what I am supposed to say about all this.
Should I send the new lens back? Stop taking photos? Shut down the blog? Is my photography now a public health hazard, like my ideas? Another woman was so outraged by these photos she said she was quitting my blog after nine years, she thought I had become arrogant and judgmental, and selfish too.
Why am I hearing about people’s eye problems? Did I ask for this too by daring to exist?
I don’t tell people about my eye problems? Are they confusing me with some Dr. Katz? Has Facebook persuaded them that we are all intimate friends, with whom we can share our private health concerns? When I post a photo or a post, am I really to consider the health issues of my readers? And why don’t they just not look if my photos bother them?
A number of people have praised the photos and compared them to Renoir or Monet paintings, a comparison I would never make. But I wonder what a museum curator would say of people walked into the Museum Of Modern Art in New York and said the Monet paintings their hurt their eyes, and so they didn’t like the paintings at all. I can’t imagine that happening in the real world, why is it okay to happen here?
I think they would be just as dumbfounded as I am. Monet’s paintings, like some of the Archomat photos, are done in soft focus, which is not the same as out of focus. The Impressionists, like me, sought to create a feeling and atmosphere, not just a literal image. They wanted some magic in their images.
I love this photo of Red above, it is very special to me (and I decided just now that I will put it up for sale if anybody wants to buy it, you can e-mail maria@fullmoonfiberart, it would be $60 plus shipping)
The result of my lens experiments has been the most successful photographs and the most popular I have ever taken. (Thank you. I think I might see a way to sell a few of my photos inexpensively, the ones that somehow touch people. Focus is a very individual thing.)
Lots of people don’t like lots of my photos, or my books, or me. That is the nature of the world, and the reality of the creative. Nobody does anything that everybody loves all the time, and social media has given readers and viewers a new and instant platform to speak their minds. That seems kind of exciting to me.
But what are the boundaries here? Often, I can’t see them or feel them.
As it happens, I am having some eye issues of my own, and am going to an opthamologist on Thursday for an examination and consultation. I am not going to share any of those details here, you deserve better than that.
But since I had to call my eye doctor anyway, I told him about these messages and asked him if it could possibly be true that my photos could hurt people’s eyes when seen on a computer or smart phone screen.
He was, like me, incredulous. “That’s kind of ridiculous,” he said, “would a painting hanging on a museum wall hurt their eyes?, he asked. “Or the Ansel Adams photos hanging on my reception wall?”
I told him social media was not that simple. He said he could not imagine any optical reason why looking at a computer screen image would be harmful unless the people were suffering from screen fatigue, a common and growing problem, or some other impairment.
Someone who had trouble with cataracts or focusing in the outside world would, of course, have the same trouble on a computer screen. But it wasn’t a photo that was causing the issue, that was “weird,” he said. He could not imagine any connection to migraines.
As a physician, he told me he was well aware of the many strange theories and diagnoses that rocket around the internet – this made life hellish for doctors, he said – but this was one new. He said he wouldn’t know how to respond either. If looking at something bothered his eyes, he would just not look at it. It was his problem, not the photographer’s.
So onward, as a good friend used to say. I think if anyone out there has eye problems resulting from a photograph I am taking, I think he or see should call a doctor, not post a message on my Facebook page. To be honest, I don’t want to see it, it is not my problem.
I understand what it is like to get older, i do it every day myself. But I wouldn’t expect poor old Monet to pack up his easel because some people’s eyes were failing. And I’m certainly not giving up my new lens, not after I love these photos and just sold 60 photos in a little over a day.
Most of the photos on my blog are digital in the ordinary way and presumably good for the eyes. Although the doctor did say someone with eye problems could have trouble looking at any kind of photo, soft focus or not, and probably would.
I told him we were on new ground here, a new and slippery slope, social media is its own world really.
As we said goodbye, the doctor had one more idea, actually one of mine: “If they don’t like the photos, or it bothers them in any way, why don’t they just not look at it?,” he said hopefully. “Why do they need to tell you about it? Why don’t they just look at something else?”
Doctor, I replied, I can tell you are not on social media much. It is never that simple. In this world there is no thought too personal or intimate to be shared with strangers. And besides, if they didn’t look, they couldn’t complain about it. And maybe that is the point I keep missing.
Onward. One day I might write a book about me and social media. I laugh about it sometimes. It was often said of writers that they always got the last word. In the new world in which we live, there is no last word.
