By Katelyn Amendolara-Russo
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – I remember standing in St. Mark’s Square in Venice and looking around at one of the most extraordinary places in the world. But what caught my attention wasn’t the architecture. It was the phones.
Everywhere I looked, there were selfie sticks held high above the crowds, screens turned outward, people capturing photographs and videos of the square, the basilica, the sounds and movement of the city around them. I found myself wondering how much of Venice they were actually experiencing – and how much they were simply recording. It made me think about the way we travel now.
We have become remarkably good at documenting our lives, but I wonder if we have become less skilled at actually being present for them.
Venice is a city that almost demands to be experienced through all of your senses. You hear the bells of San Marco, the water moving through the canals, conversations spilling out of cafés. You smell the espresso, the sea air, the food being prepared in tiny restaurants. You feel the uneven stones beneath your feet as you walk through streets that have carried people for centuries. You notice the magnificent light changing on the buildings as the day moves along. I think the camera gets in the way of experiencing these treasured experiences.
About 15 years ago, I began keeping travel journals. It started as a way to remember where I had been, but over time it became something much more meaningful. Journaling forced me to slow down enough to capture the emotion of an experience, not just the evidence of it.
Years later, I can read one of those entries and immediately return to a place in a way that looking through thousands of photographs on my phone doesn’t always accomplish.
I have started to notice the same thing in museums. I am fortunate to spend a great deal of time surrounded by remarkable works of art. One of the things that saddens me is watching visitors move through an exhibition without really experiencing it.
Someone will walk into a gallery, take a photograph of nearly every piece, record a short video, perhaps glance at the artwork for a few seconds and then continue toward the exit. Sometimes they are out the door in less than an hour. There is nothing inherently wrong with documenting an experience. But I have begun to wonder whether we sometimes confuse documenting something with experiencing it.
The same is true of art.
An artwork can be photographed in a second. Seeing it can take much longer.
A detail or a subject looks different from across the room than it does when you stand close to it. The longer you spend with a sculpture, the more you may notice its surface, its scale, its relationship to the space around it.
That kind of experience requires something that has become increasingly difficult for many of us: patience. I think we have to consciously practice it now. We have trained ourselves to move quickly – to scroll, swipe, capture, post and move on. We are surrounded by an enormous amount of visual information, yet we may be giving very little of it our full attention.
And perhaps that affects more than how we experience art or travel.
Being present is also how we experience other people. Some of the best memories I have from traveling are not photographs. They are moments when I wasn’t thinking about taking a photograph. I was simply there.
I think museums can offer that same opportunity. They can be places where we deliberately step away from the pace of everyday life and allow ourselves to observe something slowly. To be quiet, think, feel and reconsider our first impression.
The irony is that in a world filled with more images than ever before, we may need to work harder to truly see. Perhaps we don’t need to capture every moment, but we need to experience a few more of them. The next time you travel somewhere extraordinary, or walk into a museum, I hope you give yourself permission to put the phone away for a little while.
Look around, listen and notice the smaller details. You may not capture everything, but you might actually experience more. Years from now, you may remember not only what the moment looked like, but how it felt.
