What Do We See?

Photography is a great way to look at details, to look close at things we usually would not bother to look at.What do we see? That is a interesting question anyway. When we look at the world do we see what unravels itself in front of us or do we project our ideas and believes upon it? Do we take the time to look at things or do we immediately label what we see and then don’t even bother looking at them any more?When we see a soybean sprout, an egg or a kiwi, do we take the time to look? If we don’t we don’t really live life, we do live an idea of life. All we do is to project past experiences on the now and consistently repeat the past.Do we know that what we have experienced in the past will be exactly the same in the future? Is there no space for change? If there is don’t we have always have to look at life with fresh eyes?Years ago I saw somebody discussing this in a television show. The women whose name I forgot was after many years of research convinced that we constantly project the past unto our surroundings and hence never see what is happening in the moment.Should that be true then we don’t only miss out on new experiences but also live a boring and dull life. That is what makes us so different from children. They have not made up their minds yet. Every day is a day full of exploration and new adventures.The problem is judging and labeling and the belief that what was true in the past is equally true now.But this women in that television show back in Germany many years ago had also a solution. To free the mind she suggested to give what surrounds us the wrong names. The moment you call a bird a bus, a tree an air conditioner and a computer a cup your mind will get all wound up and confused. What we see is suddenly can’t be labeled because we have no past experience of a bus looking like a bird. Now we have to look at what we see in detail, now we are living in the moment and experiencing reality."What Do We See?" Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Chinatown Project, Dried Car, June 09

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