Moving Pictures

Pictures in a photograph are made of the exact same material, no matter what image it takes. The problem is that we forget the substance of the photo; one literally gets drawn into the scene of the picture itself. There is no context to frame how the picture got there, or the fact that it is the product of many conditions that extend infinitely. Instead, one's mind gets fixated on the story behind the specific picture and how the self is in relation to it.
   It's an interesting experiment to try to understand what happens when we calm our mind before or while viewing images in the media or news. The calm mindset is not about staking territory or trying to figure out one's angle or perspective on something. Instead, it's seeing all images as coming from the same stock. The images are literally flat: one is not better than the other, but all are arrangements of colors. Even the camera itself has no 'opinion' about what images it is drawing up. In the computerized world, the pixels simply arrange themselves according to patterns of light cast by the lens. What we are often seeing is a digital replica of that arrangement of light along the lens. If we think of the image as an interrelationship of light and various kinds of processing, would we be so attached to the outcome of the image?
    If we stare at the image long enough, what happens? What changes in our relationship to it? I have found two things happen. One is that an habituation sets in: we are no longer shocked by what we see, but we accommodate our mindset to place the theme and characters of the photo into some conceivable framing that might feel natural to us. The second thing I notice is that there is less back and forth mental chatter. I am no longer opining about it, or trying to negotiate its "real" meaning, or even trying to analyze how to deal with the image. Instead,  I might start to recognize that all of the chatter is created by mind and is the result of all kinds of past conditioning and mental scripts. Pictures and stories often call us (unconsciously perhaps) to be something or rise to the occasion that the story or image conveys. But this calling forth is also constituting a subject, an I, that is also transitory.