2010, from Autobiography, in my iPad application Horvatland
I once used to say – partly as a joke, partly because it was really one of my daydreams – that I would happily have one of my eyes taken out and replaced by a tiny camera, which would be similar to an eye and allow me – with a blink, for example – to take furtive photos of what I see with the other. Then – six or seven years ago – a Korean manufacturer came out with a mobile phone that could also take photos. My dream seemed close to coming true – except that the quality of the images was still low. But a year later, Canon put on the market a ‘compact’, even smaller than the Olympus I had used for Daily Report, but with the resolution of a professional reflex camera. And, above all, with a little screen on the back, which allowed one to frame and shoot while holding it at arm’s length. For a photographer used to gluing his eye to the viewfinder, this was a mutation comparable to the first fish crawling on dry land, or to the first primate standing on its hind legs. So my immediate idea, when testing it, was to take a photo that I would have believed to be impossible: the palm of my left hand, photographed by the camera held in my right and viewed on the little screen half a metre from my eyes. Another advantage of these ‘compacts’ was that they allowed extreme close-ups. For me, who was approaching eighty, this meant a possibility of discovering new worlds, without walking too far from my armchair, or getting out of breath, or having to climb on stools or to crawl about on all fours…