Pick of the Issue this week is Nick Paumgarten’s "We Are A Camera." It’s about the GoPro camera – “a perfect instrument for the look-at-me
age,” Paumgarten says. The piece reports on the morning of GoPro’s stock market
launch (“Woodman, in jeans and a dark-blue button-down shirt, tan and fit with white
teeth and spiky dark hair, led them in impromptu banshee howls, the feral
woo-hoos of joyriders everywhere, and chants of ‘Go Pro! Go Pro! Go Pro!’ and
with his non-GoPro hand flashed the surfer’s hang-loose shaka sign”). It
describes a GoPro video of three men parachuting from the top of One World
Trade Center (“Most striking of all is the vision, once the plummet begins, of
the illuminated glass façade of the tower sliding past, the pace accelerating
yet oddly slow, almost elegant, with no trace really of violence or terror”). It
chronicles Paumgarten’s attendance at the GoPro Mountain Games, in Vail,
Colorado, where he went whitewater kayaking (“On bridges and banks: GoPros
everywhere. We were mayflies, flashing through the frames of strangers”). My
favorite part of “We Are A Camera” is Paumgarten’s descriptive analysis of his
ten-year-old son’s GoPro ski video:
Even though the camera was turned outward, filled mainly by
the sight of the terrain sliding past, it provided, more than anything, a
glimpse into the mind of a dreamy and quiet boy—who, to my eyes, during the
day, had been just a nose, his features and expressions otherwise hidden by
helmet, neck gaiter, and goggles. I didn’t need a camera to show me what he
looked like to the world, but was delighted to find one that could show me what
the world looked like to him.
“We Are A Camera” brims with superb
descriptions and illuminating perceptions. In other words, it's quintessential Paumgarten. I enjoyed it immensely.
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