Hopeful glints of long exposures in the cave
Given that Plato would have been stayed in the cave for an extended period of time, assembled his tripod to do some long exposures, what would he have posted of that on instagram? What would he have seen? An inventory of the cave, which would not have shown the shadows on the walls, which are the only things the colleagues downstairs can recognize, but would tell from the courage of those who stand up and leave.
It is the ensemble of two critical aspects that condition this courage - time as yoke, light as promise. The longer one has already spent in the cave the more one's soul may be undermined by the repetitions of the same old images. Time thins down, it supposedly looses recognizability throughout its fading.
But light in the cave, which stems from fire, might transport a kind of anamnetical hunch in its flickering, that might release some memories. Plato that is to say thinks that as immortal souls we have been here before, and therefore every knowledge is remembering. In the case of the cave it is the remembering that those shadows can't be truth.
'The cave', Regensburg, 2009 © Dr. Christine Lehr
"What makes photography
a strange invention is that
its primary raw materials
are light and time."
John Berger
If the resignation of time and the promise of light concur strongly enough, one will stand up and leave. But here it gets tricky, because becoming aware of something that was not known before often times evokes fear and can lead to withdrawal. Plato would have released the shutter button exactly there - towards the face of someone standing up, at the threshold of knowledge. Where the exit of the cave was a choice, but meant the biggest courage.
He would have recorded the moment of shock when breathe holds up behind the heart, the moment in which everything is possible - freedom from all shadows or the absolute negation of light. In the exhalation he would have already posted the photo on instagram. And then someone pulls out his smartphone and sees Plato's newest post - a face full of ecstatic joy, with eyes overflowing of bliss - he stands on the meadow?
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