Camera

On my Rolling Stones' tour, the camera was a protection. I used it in a Zen way.

~ Annie Liebovitz

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On a visit to my parents' house, I saw this on a shelf in the basement.  It is my first camera.  I vaguely remember that the photos were of a farm or animals or something.  The flash bulb turned when you clicked the button and there was a viewer where you could change the tint with a little wheel that made the image look red, blue, or yellow, I think.

I was destined to enjoy photography from the time I got that camera, I think.  I loved that thing.  It didn't actually take photos, but it did get me in the habit of looking through a little circle at the world.  Which most of us do if we use our eyes to look at the world.  They are little circles.  And the photos we take with them are kept in scrapbooks in our minds.

I think I always was interested in how people look at the world.  Photography was one way of showing that maybe I saw things differently.  That reality is in the eye of the beholder.  Or the camera of the beholder.  But even then, additional reality is made from the photographs by those looking at them.  An endless continuation of observation and interpretation.

I'm pretty sure that was what I was thinking when I was four and using this toy camera and apparently eating the sticker off the front of it.