Photography, that destructor of auras, eats away at reality, but we’re no longer wont to accept reality without photography. To gaze upon, say, a chain of promontories, stretching out one from behind the other into the sun-blinding sea, will not do if we cannot photograph it–and in scrambling for the camera, taking aim, framing and reframing, it goes without saying that we miss the view. There’s a point to be made about mediation here, but I don’t want to make it. I’m far more interested in the impulse, or instinct, even. Because it’s second nature to reach for the camera when confronted with the new, shocking, harrowing, delightful, sublime. It’s second nature even though someone else most likely photographed it better than us already, and no aspect of showing the photo to others actually proves that we were there. Vacation photos are a more complex ritual that I care to get into here, and one I probably like more than most people, but there are rewards to be reaped, I think, from repressing this particular urge to reproduce.