In Praise of a Frame
Looking to see in the age of the infinite scroll
“Here dies another day
During which I have had eyes, ears, hands
And the great world around me;
and with tomorrow begins another.
Why am I allowed two?”
― G.K. Chesterton
Our brains can identify an image in as little as 13 milliseconds.1
Spanish artist Joan Miro said, ‘You can look at a picture for a week and never think of it again,’ he said. ‘You can also look at a picture for a second and think of it all your life.’
Miro’s own life drew to a close over a decade before the first commercial camera phone was released in 1999 in Japan. I wonder how he would have considered our culture’s deluge of digital imagery weighed against the unforgettable power of a single picture. Psychologists and scientists tell us that by being more responsive to digital technologies, we are becoming less aware of our surroundings.2 The algorithms which curate our digital echo chambers and bolster our ‘ocular bias’3, show us what we want to see, rather than what we need to see or would naturally see. Our attention spans have diminished and, at least our looking – our seeing — is suffering.
‘People will come to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think,’ Neil Postman eerily predicted in his 1985 book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, 22 years before the invention of the iPhone. I have been wondering for a long time whether technology, especially social media, is also undoing our capacity to see.
Recently, my eyes feel tired—fatigued by digital spaces that have no edges and no frames, no beginnings and no endings. I want to see to understand and also I want to be seen and understood, not in part, but fully, in person, eye-to-eye.
We are exposed to more images than ever before, yet, in the words of one of the characters of Steinbeck’s novels, “I wonder how many people I’ve looked at all my life and never seen.”
Enter the Frame.
You know, with actual corners and defined edges; a postcard, a page, a newspaper, a window. I can look for however long I like. I can turn away when I am ready to. I can turn a page. I can fold a corner. I can close a curtain. I can open a latch. The frame has no dark underbelly algorithm with motives we can’t see, it just is.
Look around you now. Whatever is framed is probably ordinary, reassuring, beautiful or necessary.
I don’t often find those things when I use my eyes on social media anymore. It’s becoming harder for me to discern what’s necessary, what’s real, what’s wise, what’s helpful, because there it all sits; endless and visible, without accountability, without intimacy and without (seeming) vulnerability.
Writing my Polaroids regularly, was a way I could begin sifting through the volume of what I seeing, largely inspired by advice from author Anne Lamott,
“I finally notice the one-inch picture frame that I put on my desk to remind me of short assignments. It reminds me that all I have to do is to write down as much as I can see through a one-inch picture frame. This is all I have to bite off for the time being. All I am going to do right now, for example, is write that one paragraph…”
All I have to do is to write down as much as I can see.
A frame reminds me that I can begin and end in the same place and that is more than okay. A frame reminds me I can settle my gaze on something within my reach. A frame gives me relief from the abyss of content in digital spaces with no edges. A frame encloses something hard fought-for, cherished, private, unknown by many except a few. A frame is not really the point, it is self-forgetful, allowing another to shine.
In scriptures, the Hebrew word Selah is like a frame. Some experts say Selah is akin to a musical note, others say that transliterated it means, pause, breathe, think for a moment, be calm. I imagine the invitation of a frame as the same: slow and see.
Selah, slow and see.
What matters? What is marked apart? What is worthy of your attention and time?
As a photographer, I have written before about how a single image, or series of images, can narrow our gaze in a way that begins to change the world. I believe this, because I have seen images move people into action that saves lives. Colour can breathe life into weary bodies, I wrote a while ago. Color has biological and psychological effects, Magsamen and Ross write.4 A frame brings something large and abstract, personal and close, into the fabric of our bodies. In other words, what we see, lives in us.
Our eyes, Jesus says in scripture, are the lamps by which we see, and by which others can see into us— small windows framing the essence of who we are.
I’m reaching the middle of my life by some countries life expectancies. I need to be more certain of the things that matter, and less certain of the things that don’t. Looking for frames around me is one way that helps me to do that. When life is moving fast, I need the windows–– the chance to be still while light does the work, moving around me, bringing forth one minute, then another, then another.
I need the edges to create good work; word counts, the borders of a single page, feedback, a topic, a title, a byline. Looking through my camera viewfinder teaches me restraint and decisiveness. Now, I need to embrace my own limits as a writer; during a typical week, I only have two hours to write outside of my full-time job as a leader of a creative team in a global not-for-profit and a full-time parent.
Between seasons of chronic sickness and pain, I sit at the window, noticing what the light is doing. I see a sunset illuminate the steam from my boiled sweet potatoes. I see dawn tiptoe along the branches of my shivering native plants. I see the moon move behind the gum tree while my own body aches and moves slowly.
Maybe this is the point: recently, I crave containment. When life feels busy, I search for the chance to be still while light does the work — shimmering while I cannot. I long to rest my head, my hands, my eyes against something solid in the age of the infinite scroll. Show me the beginning and the end. Show me the solidity and certainty; I’m tired of illusions. Show me the truth you’d stake your life on.
My twin sister and I talked about The Atlantic Article : Why Rich People Don’t Cover Their Windows. We love the part about Dutch people letting their neighbours see inside their houses at night as an act of faith and trust. Letting people see into your home can be an act of vulnerability or security, the article argues. She, the history teacher of the family, tells me that in the Netherlands, during Nazi occupations, it was illegal to have curtains, making it easier for households to be spied on. Maybe, she says, they just didn’t put their curtains back up after the war. I like the thought of this oversight —post-war life moved on day by day and oppression faded as households began to trust again. Homes were slowly restored by letting the light in.
I’ll never forget once seeing a mother who was blind, open the window to her small cement house in the tea fields of Northern Bangladesh. Breeze ruffled her sari. Dust shook from the wooden boards around the window. Sunlight soaked her skin. Someone who is blind doesn’t open their window to see, I remember thinking, she is opening it to feel.
As always, I love hearing from you. Feel free to leave feedback, comments or reflections.
MIT neuroscientists found the brain can identify images seen for as little as 13 milliseconds - MIT Research (2014)
Video footage of pedestrians has shown that people on phones walk about 10 percent slower than their undistracted counterparts - NYT (2024) https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/23/well/smartphone-walking-posture-mood.html
A perceptual and epistemological bias ranking vision over other senses in Western cultures. - Oxford Reference.com. (The term ‘ocular bias’ was often used by my friend Sam and is a nod to some of his thinking on the topic.)
“Color is also vibration in that it is energy, and it has biological and psychological effects.” Magasamen and Ross (2023)
Lovely post. Thank you.
Wow, this enriches so so much of what I have been thinking as a photographer of creating more works that are print/frame worthy heirloom focused > digital and fleeting... Frame as selah. I will remember that. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.