Through the prism of discontent

It's strange how the the world is now seen through the camera of the smart phone.
Photography is an art form and when the professional photographer sets about his task of portraying a scene his photographic intellect gets in the way. He contrives the angles and makes the most out of the scene he is trying to capture. Like a still life painting he follows the norms of etiquette and good manners in his portrayal of his fellow human being. 


The amateur in contrast who captures today's footage in the field of battle or some catastrophe that has just happened is not the remote professional insulated from the scene but rather someone who belongs in the scene and just happens to have a phone with him. The difference is dramatic and we get the real time effect of the carnage and feel for person there taking the shots.
Usually the scenes are in the process of being destroyed and it would take a hard person not to reflect how lucky we are to be watching from the comfort of our armchair. The armchair and our living room remain our sanctuary.
I remember watching the Twin Towers being attacked and watching the awful event in which thousands were dying in front of our eyes, watching it as if we were at the cinema and this was a Hollywood blockbuster.
It's similar when I watched last night scenes from down town Johannesburg and Durban. The burnt out shops and buildings the people picking their way past the scenes of violence as the indigenous South African rose in frustration at his exposure to immigration and the effect it has had on his tenuous hold on life and his living standards.
The image of the stark buildings, many of them utilitarian, functional but not pretty are a reminder what living in a city does to the human psyche when people are used as a unit of production or alternatively, part of governments machinery to codify our lives in some way or other. Aesthetics are not part of the planners mind set or in the architects brief and its this disregard for the humans who work and live within these Orwellian inner city landscapes which breeds the contempt for his fellows around him.