August 17, 2005

We met at the golden hour on the main street in New Hamburg and instantly whipped out our cameras and started taking pictures of others taking pictures. There were six of us, locked in some kind of weird meta-photographic chain.

“We got to stop being so goddamn self-reflexive,” I said.

“What the fuck?” Nicole snapped.

She was still angry about the fight she had the day before, when she was accused of not being “self-reflexive” enough. An angry, young man didn’t like the fact that Nicole’s activist club was working within the system, rather than against it.

“What does that mean, not being ‘self-reflexive’ enough?” Nicole asked him. The angry, young man told her that he wanted more action … more active resistance … more direct confrontation with oppressive forces. He didn’t want her club to be complicit with the system, and kept talking about “them” a lot. He was angry at “the system,” at inaction, at oppression. Nicole ran out of the room crying.

If I were there, I would have probably cried too. The angry, young man clearly misuses the word “self-reflexive.” He seemed to demand a revolution, some real, tangible change, but what came out instead was a demand for more meaningless, postmodern actions.

“Yes!” I said, pointing my camera at Nicole who was pointing her camera at Jason who was … “We’re finally self-reflexive, all of us! You should tell that angry, young man that we are all revolutionary and beautiful.”

“And also complicit with the system by running around with these cameras,” Dave Alexander said. I assured him that we were the system, and the six of us cavorted through the park, taking self-reflexive, meaningless pictures. It was pretty great.

And it got even better when Sherry and Regan showed up with their film cameras built out of metal. We took pictures of spiders and joyful things, before we went home to embrace postmodernity and everything meta:

• Dave’s Photos (new!)
• Photoroaming Group
• Nicole’s Photos
• Jason’s Photos
• Regan’s Photos (they’re awesomely saturated)
• Martin’s Photos
• Laura’s Photos
• Tudor’s Photos
• Jason’s Blog Entry
• Laura’s Blog Entry
• Martin’s Photoblog
• Dave’s Blog Entry