Ugly, but delicious

We're sitting by the sea, a friend and I, on a Cyclades island, looking, as one does, at the bay, the waves and the wind, the sunlight and the colors it creates. We're talking about the objectivity of observations. If you were to put a camera here now and record this for an hour, that would be objective, my friend says. For some reason, I want to protest. Such a camera only offers a single view; it doesn't see what I see—"But that's precisely what objective means," my friend rightly objects.

That's right. I look subjectively, of course. And if you had a whole grid of cameras, nine of them, each recording a portion of reality, I suggest, I'd be more satisfied. Because that would more closely approximate human vision. But then again, you wouldn't be able to see all nine images simultaneously, so your gaze would start to wander, and objectivity would still be entirely theoretical.

Actually, I admit, I'm resisting because I don't want objectivity, but truth. The truth of experience. Or perhaps I even want to expand experience.

Two days later, I'm strolling around the island one morning, and oh, how wonderful it is—the scents of dried herbs, the sound of water flowing through a concrete gutter, the hills and mountains on the other side of the valley, the warmth of the muted sunlight—thankfully, there are a few clouds. I decide to take a photo of the view I'm enjoying for a moment.

It's turning out to be a ridiculous photo. The weather seems very gloomy, and at my feet lies yet another half-finished section of a house, covered in rebar, and electrical wires cut through the frame. I quite like the clutter of the Greek landscape: an empty oil drum that someone once painted, poles with wires, crumbling stone from where something has been built or might be—it's all so pleasant, so unlike the atmosphere of a luxury resort with its perfection and tedium. It's the kind of landscape where you sit sweating, enjoying a tomato and the sound of goat bells in the distance. When I hear them, I always think of something a friend once told me: that shepherds synchronize the goat bells so that harmony emanates from the herd. You can hardly imagine anything more peaceful and friendly.

That objective photo, of that view I was enjoying, obviously conveys nothing of all that. A better photographer could have taken a more successful picture, but because I was aiming for objectivity, I wasn't looking for a frame. Isn't looking for a frame more objective then? Many people make sure their holiday photos don't include other tourists; that's neither objective nor true.

The reason I don't like my photo is because I believe I carry the truth within me, the truth of this moment, the most subjective truth imaginable. So that's not truth. I want the photo to show the joy I feel.

Oh, what is one looking for? There is no Truth, and objectivity seems rather contrived to me. But if you say that, you sound like a postmodernist who calls everything just a story and a quote, and I don't want that at all. I want to believe in what I see and experience as a subject, without any documentary intentions. So just look and know this moment: being here is wonderful. Not objective.