Meaning of Life

In the class Journalism in 2017, a course focusing on all manner of news, this first unit has risen with the awareness of the art of photojournalism. There were some challenging points of finding the right subject matter to the pictures of as not everything is practical or symbolic. For the Action Project, we were assigned to start up an interview and ask the interviewee what their meaning of life is. My interviewee was an former underclassmen and still is a close friend of mine, who'll be known as Manny. The project goes off into being 1000 words in length and touches upon how photos can relate to the meaning of life.

"Manel", VG, 2017

With a medium aperture and high shutter speed, I snapped this picture of Manny as he operates on a laptop. His vibrant hat defines his head as it rests on a focal point and center stage, with his face and eyes centered and looking towards the dim screen. His room is captured and the most bland and uninteresting angles, effectively highlight the focus to his hat. Who's wearing the hat? Manny is, and your eye proceeds to scan the rest of the figure seeing him hunched over with  his hands contrasting with his lighter colored shirt. Matching with his opinion on life, there's not much information from this picture aside from the laptop being relatively used, so there's experience shared with it. Other than that, it's a plain background with no more information than the blank error screen due to a lack of internet connection. This aligns perfectly with how he sees life.

"I don't really know what life means, because it's a subjective flaw we all must overcome."

There's nothing but emptiness on this fixed perspective. A single touch of personality almost overridden by the bleak and blank environment. In a world where everything is common, there are minuscule defining points. "Flaws" if you will. The picture, while barren and uninteresting, as an art piece, captures this tone of one or a couple things standing out to make it distinguishable. The lack of information adds to the mystery that is life and the very fact color is reserved to a focal point was actually a bit of luck on my framing. You can really hear the silence in that room.

Transcribed Interview:

Has life always meant the same thing to you or has it changed? Why?

I don’t know what life means yet, and the level importance for things times change.

Do you have any story about the meaning of life or more specifically, why you don’t know what it means?

It’s not my job, it’s not our job to live life to understand it. Well that’s just me, I don’t think there’s a big message in the end or a destiny everyone has. But what I think life is will always be different from the next person.

Is there anything that influenced your thoughts on life?

No, I think it was just a general consensus I’ve had since I was a kid.

What image would you associate with the word “life”?

I think of either a spark or of the color white because of how spontaneous and somewhat blank it can be.

Considering you live life but aren’t aware of its meaning, have you come across anything that’s made you doubt reality?

Well when something is too perfect or lines up just too well, and I also have an interest in the glitches in the Matrix theory. I don’t believe it but it’s interesting. But before I get sidetracked, I just know that when something is too flawless, it gets me suspicious.

So in that right, you might say that you think life is flawed. Going off of that, do you think life should be flawed or is there someway we can make it perfect?

What would be the point of living a life where you have everything at your disposal with no reward or achievements? You’ll be miserably bored and want to die by the time you’re 25. People work for what they want to feel accomplished, or else there’s no point. That’s like booting up the game and then you use a gameshark or something, which gives you everything, then there’s no point.

Alright then, so as a final question, in this concept of flawed life, what would you say is the best example to explain these concept?

Well since everyone perceives life differently, there will be different flaws. For me, there are certain societal expectations that I don’t understand, so human nature would be my example of a flaw. Flaws are subjective, and everyone’s life has some flaw. If there weren’t any flaws, there would be no point.

So life itself is a subjective flaw?

Yeah, basically.

Hm, alright, thanks for the interview.

Mhm.