She is a
stab in the eye. Visual sensory input is nothing but the perception of light.
Light reflected off the retina is blood red. This is the obsolete phenomenon of
red eye, destroyed when they invented the preflash. The eye instinctually
dilates, reducing the exposure to the light. The shot is taken before the
subject can blink. All this happens in less than a second, which, in some
cases, is the difference between life and death.
A camera is
merely a humane gun. You point it, and shoot. In a riot, a camera uploaded to a
live video-feed is more lethal than a concealed uzi. You are untouchable with a
camera, as she is from the face I hide behind. You mouth off verbal gutturals,
she shifts her position, fabric cloaking the skin, dressed to kill. Clothing
makes nakedness invisible. My face is hidden behind the camera, my other eye
shut, cutting the pain in half.
From beyond
the barrier, she is unaware of anything but her own body, as I am aware of as
much she is not. This is the barrier of social norm, the artificial breakable
glass separating the role of photographer and photographed. The shutter snaps one more time. I mouth off the word to relax, and she does.
Do you know
why the camera is pointed the other way, and not towards me? I ask. No, she
says. You are beautiful, I say, as her lips tense, the telltale sign of the superasternal notch, the hollow at the base of the neck, collapsing onto
itself. This is the area you look for in a fight. Eyes and body language
deceive, but the notch never lies. I shake my head. All pretty girls should
wear thick scarves. The kerchief brought over the mouth, concealing the nose
and lower facial extremities, is not a fashion statement, any less than the sideways grip.
This is
erotic geography, and I am throwing darts on the map. The paradox of movement freezes each dart in its position its space, each shutter snap in mid-motion.
I stop
breathing. She had blinked. In a captured moment her eyes are closed, the mouth
relaxed. The camera reverses itself, capturing the captor outside-in, falls to
the floor, a voluntary snap.
When we were
young we were told to stay still. This is why they don’t smile in those old
photographs, it takes too much effort. Happiness does not last for an extended
instant, but stops and resumes in predictable patterns. Show happiness and your
face will be a vague undefined blur. The motion shot and smile detect removed
much of this. A dead body videotaped only captures camera shake. A videotape of
a dead body is a photograph. Paper is the long forgotten corpse of a dead tree,
rotting along with flesh. But in the digital age, you are forever.