Poetic Sadness: CAMERA
CAMERA, directed by David Cronenberg, TIFF Origical, Youtube, 2016.
A beautiful short film with a gentle pace. It carries a quiet sadness that feels deeply poetic, the kind of melancholy that is both sorrowful and beautiful at once. It tells the story of a former actor reflecting on an old camera in their home, its presence stirring feelings of nostalgia and mortality as children play with it. The film delicately captures the tension between memory, time, and the actor’s anxieties.
I love this line from the film: “Photography is death. When you are recording this moment, you are recording the death of this moment.” I had never thought of it that way, that photography aligns itself with death. There is sadness in that idea, but not a despairing one. It’s a soft ache, a tender reminder of impermanence. Yet, there is also comfort in knowing that even though the moment dies, it leaves behind a trace. That trace can never equal the fullness of lived presence, but it holds a kind of ghostly intimacy. The camera becomes a witness that preserving absence as much as presence. The beauty of this idea lies in its contradiction: photography kills the moment and keeps it alive. It is both violence and tenderness. And maybe that’s why it feels so human because our desire to hold on always coexists with our inability to stop time.
I often think about death, especially after my near-death accident, and I want my art to carry the same poetic sadness—the pain of trauma, the vulnerability of the body, the loss of sensation, and the weight of memory. When I record pain, scarring, and the alteration of my body in art, they become more real. I mourn the time when my body was still whole, but by acknowledging the loss I also allow myself to heal. Like the camera, my art preserves the pain, makes it visible, and allows it to be shared. The sadness is not erased, but captured, held, and transformed into presence. I also want my artwork to feel human in this same way as CAMERA, to let viewers resonate with its emotions. To make it human, I must create contrast, tension, and contradiction, allowing two seemingly opposite qualities to exist together.
TIFF Originals. “CAMERA Short Film | TIFF PRELUDE | David Cronenberg: Virtual Exhibition” 4 March 2016. YouTube video, 6:23. Accessed 14 October 2025. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SC7YsHWoX5A
