"Blowup"

Lessons from Michelangelo Antonioni's 1966 film.

Recently Dr. McCullough and I had a long conversation about the Border Crisis. We are often told that, in recent years, somewhere between 6 and 8 million people have illegally crossed the southern border and entered the United States. Though it’s seldom explicitly stated, it is implied that up to 8 million foreign newcomers are now living amongst us. Some have apparently somehow integrated and found a decent place to stay and work. Others are apparently dwelling somewhere in the United States, though where exactly they are staying and what they are doing is unclear.

To conceptualize 6-8 million human beings, consider that New York City has a population of 8.4 million, while Los Angeles has a population of 3. 4 million.

Apart from an uncle with a ranch on the southern border of Texas, some friends in El Paso, and a journalist in San Diego who covers illegal immigration, I don’t know anyone in my large circle of contacts who has reported actually seeing any illegal immigrants.

I know a few illegal immigrants, but they have lived in the U.S. for some time, doing hard labor jobs. Here in Dallas, the only homeless people I ever see are American white and black males. Rarely if ever do I see a homeless man of hispanic or Asian ancestry.

So, where are these 6-8 million illegal immigrants? Where are they dwelling and how are their basic biological needs being met? I’m not saying they don’t exist; I’m just saying that I haven’t seen any of them, even though I live in a border state.

The question reminds me of Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 film Blowup, about a careless London fashion photographer who snaps pictures of a pair of lovers kissing in a park.

Later he suspects that one of his snapshots apparently captured a murder being perpetrated in the bushes behind the embracing couple. Blowing up the image, his suspicion is apparently confirmed by what appears to be a hand protruding from the bushes that is holding a pistol.

That evening he goes back to the park and discovers a dead body near the location he captured in the photograph. However, before he has the chance to photograph the corpse, he is frightened by the sound of a twig snapping and runs away. When he returns later, the body is gone.

At this point, he begins to question the reliability of his own perceptions of reality and even his technical ability (as a professional photographer) to record objective reality. As Antonioni stated in an interview, "The film is not about man's relationship with man; it’s about man's relationship with reality.”

Nowadays we live in a world in which we are constantly being told stories of enormous events going on around us. For example, we regularly hear that 6-8 million foreigner newcomers are now amongst us.

Consider that, at the height of the Great Depression, there were approximately 2 million homeless people wandering the country, seeking food and shelter. Many lived in shanty towns called Hoovervilles. When I was a boy, my great grandmother told me that she regularly saw poor homeless men during the Depression.

Estimates of the number of homeless people in San Francisco range from 7,500 to 20,000, and whenever I visit the city, they strike me as ubiquitous.

And so, lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the photographer Thomas in Blowup. What can we really know about what is going on in our world?

Could it be that, whenever we are now told about momentous events, we need to see them with our own eyes and photograph them with our own cameras before can rationally believe in their existence?