The Art of Travel - Alain De Botton [59]
The tone was hysterical, but the dilemma was genuine. Technology may make it easier to reach beauty, but it does not simplify the process of possessing or appreciating it.
What, then, was wrong with photography? Nothing, thought Ruskin initially. ‘Among all the mechanical poison that this terrible nineteenth century has poured upon men, it has given us at any rate one antidote,' he wrote of Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre's invention of 1839. In Venice in 1845, he made numerous daguerreotypes and delighted in the results. To his father he wrote, ‘Daguerreotypes taken by this vivid sunlight are glorious things. It is very nearly the same thing as carrying off a palace itself—every chip of stone and stain is there—and of course, there can be no mistakes about proportion.'
Yet Ruskin's enthusiasm diminished as he began to note the devilish problem that photography created for the majority of its practitioners. Rather than employing it as a supplement to active, conscious seeing, they used the medium as a substitute, paying less attention to the world than they had done previously, taking it on faith that photography automatically assured them possession of it.
In explaining his love of drawing (it was rare for him to travel anywhere without sketching something), Ruskin once remarked that it had arisen not from a desire ‘for reputation, [or] for the good of others, [or] for my own advantage, but from a sort of instinct like that of eating or drinking”. What unites the three activities is that they all involve assimilations by the self of desirable elements from the world, a transfer of goodness from without to within. As a child, Ruskin said, he had so loved the look of grass that he had frequently wanted to eat it, but gradually he had discovered that it would be better to try to draw it: ‘I used to lie down on it and draw the blades as they grew—until every square foot of meadow, or mossy bank, became a possession to me' (emphasis added).
Photography alone could not, and cannot, ensure such eating. True possession of a scene is a matter of making a conscious effort to notice elements and understand their construction. We can see beauty well enough just by opening our eyes, but how long this beauty will survive in memory depends on how intentionally we have apprehended it. The camera blurs the distinction between looking and noticing, between seeing and possessing; it may give us the option of true knowledge, but it may also unwittingly make the effort of acquiring that knowledge seem superfluous. It suggests that we have done all the work simply by taking a photograph, whereas proper eating of a place—a woodland, for example—requires that we pose ourselves a series of questions such as ‘How do the stems connect to the roots?' ‘Where is the mist coming from?' ‘Why does one tree seem darker than another?' These questions are implicitly asked and answered in the process of sketching.
5.
Encouraged by Ruskin's democratic vision of drawing, I tried my hand at it during my travels. As to what I should draw, it seemed sensible to be guided by the same desire to possess beauty that had previously led me to take up my camera. In Ruskin's words, ‘Your art is
John Ruskin, Study of a Peacock's Breast Feather, 1873
to be the praise of something that you love. It may only be the praise of a shell or a stone.'
I decided to draw the bedroom window at the Mortal Man because it was to hand and seemed attractive on a bright autumn