Art?

 

I remember how, one day in 1982 when I was living permanently in London studying Filmmaking, I sat at a table in the British Film Institute after a meeting with a Film Producer who had a look at an idea of mine for a screenplay. I remember how the world around me stopped for a minute while I offered a humble prayer to Life: I prayed that one day I would become a true Professional. I did not pray to become good because I knew how many people were far more gifted than me. I just prayed for Life to help me become a professional; a competent technician earning my living in what I loved... I also loved photography and it was far cheaper than making films, so, when it came to become self-employed in order to keep renewing my British resident’s visa I started working as a commercial photographer, for the Theater: stage, actors... The prayer was the same: to become a professional.

To be sure, people view some photographers, and some filmmakers, as “artists”. Truth be told, the term “artist” is a misleading appellation assigned by the viewing public to those whom they think do a real nice job with a personal touch and consistent contribution and style. Yet, no true artist will ever tell you they are an “artist”. They know better. If someone comes and tells you they are an artist, well, they are not; they just buy into their own myth, or try to sell it for money, or glory, or both.

Forty years later I look back to a happy career, successful enough to give me the resources I needed to live and to bring up a family and my son. I only did what I loved and I honestly don’t feel like I worked a day in my life. Whether I did become a Professional in the true sense of the word is not up to me to say but it is up to others to assign the term to me. Enough folks in my life, in the marketplace and in society have opined that Life did, in fact, answer my prayer and granted me my wish.

But it was short-lived. “Professionalism” in photography and in filmmaking no longer holds the true meaning it held when I prayed for it, when I studied it, when I apprenticed, and when I worked.

These days, if you buy a “smart” cellphone, Presto! you are a photographer. And a filmmaker! Voilà! You can publish your work instantly, free of any cost on the internet and get dozens, hundreds, or however many “followers” you have to leave emojis “Like”, “Heart”, “Wow!”

You can be a Photographer, a Filmmaker, a journalist, a writer, and my favorite treatise in bullshit: An Influencer. All you need to do is buy a cell phone with a little camera and buy an internet connection.

Henri Cartier-Bresson? Margaret Bourke-White? Federico Fellini? Agnès Varda? Bob Woodward? Andrea Mitchell? Ernest Hemingway? Virginia Woolf? Robert Frost? Emily Dickinson? Who are these guys? Are they on Instagram? Facebook? Blogspot?

These days I go up to a young professional photographer or self-anointed “artist” and I try to have an interesting conversation with them about how the choice of size of back-of-the-lens registration area, combined with the choice of focal length for the lens, influences the dimensionality of the structure in the composition and the dynamics involved. They look at me as if I were speaking Chinese. They have no clue what I am talking about.

I put myself through the 40-year process of becoming a true Professional only to arrive at the years of repose and witness that my Profession no longer exists. Nobody gives a shit. Because they have smartphones that take pictures, take videos, and publish the shit at no cost to an avalanche of “Like!”, “Heart!” and “Wow”.

My Skill-Set and the knowledge I was told I was professional at, is gone, forever. My son, who loved the stuff I created now looks at it from above but we won’t ever be able to talk about it again. The $1,500 per day I used to get for my work I can still get if I wanted to, but I just don’t want to get it by giving my clients what they want today, so they can consider it “Like!”, “Heart!”, “Wow” while I, myself, will consider it shit.

Film Photography, 35 mm and 6x6 cm film: 1925-2010, Rest in Peace.

The Cinema, 35 mm and 70 mm film: 1916-early 21st Century, Rest in Peace.

My body of Work is what I can look at now, forty years after I offered my prayer to Life at the British Film Institute. I can see the epochs and eras and days of my Work as in a museum. And I can remember what decision I made in each composition. The choice of lens, and focal length and depth of field, the choice of angle and the choice of lighting.

But today people have been liberated from the shackles and chains of knowledge. Freedom of expression. No need to learn anything. Just put a few bricks one on top of the other, call yourself an architect and your friends will exclaim “Like!”, “Heart!”, “Wow!”.

Today’s people look at the large and oblong, horizontal frame TV screens. A horizontal panorama. They spend their lives looking at a horizontal oblong screen at their TV or their laptops or computers.

But when it comes to making a video themselves, they hold their smartphone vertically. The synaptic functions in their brains, the neurons firing to get them to “think” do not carry the thought process far enough to order their wrist to turn 90 degrees so they can hold their phone horizontally, instead of vertically, and make horizontal frame movies to fit their Horizontal TV screen. That is the level of total dumb-stupidity that is the norm among new generations. Ignorance due to indifference... Dumb-fuck, I think is the sociological definition older psychiatrists would offer.

Me? I am just on pension now, witnessing the complete and utter demise, around me, of everything I had prayed to become. Even if I am it, there’s nobody around who can recognize it anymore. I feel like I, myself am but a relic in the Museum of Human Pointlessness.

The mob is burning the Library. Again. Hypatia is laying on the marble floor, dying. Again. Darkness is descending around us; a darkness that stops minds from evolving anything which might resemble Thought. 

I once was a good, they say, professional. Now, in my twilight, who the hell cares.

Yes, my dears, the phone is smart. You are not.

PS. I did make five feature films, almost 2 hours, 45 minutes each. I am told by those who matter that they are good. I made them with my son for him between his ages of 14 and 17. I made them as time capsules, that they may continue to reveal to him all their hidden messages as he would grow older, and older. But now that Costas and Lindsey flew west on their very, very long, infinitely long flight, it turns out that our Movies, our Cinema, will not serve as his memories, but mine.

Summerwinds (2006) 2hrs, 27 mins, screen ratio: 1:2.2 (Panavision format)

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