Why photography is the perfect antidote to “second-screen” culture

I’m going to admit something to you – and I apologise for perpetuating gender stereotypes, but I must live my truth. I am very bad at multitasking. Awful. If Thing A is currently occupying my attention, I am congenitally incapable of paying any mind to Thing B – and forget about Thing C.

For this reason, the rise of content built for “second-screen viewing” has been deeply confusing for me. Second-screen viewing, if you don’t know, is a term that has arisen in the streaming era, referring to movies and TV that is written, shot and edited under the assumption that it is being watched on the viewer’s “second screen” – because said viewer is looking at their first screen, their phone.

This has, according to some reports, given rise to executives at Netflix instructing writers of its movies and shows to have characters “announce what they’re doing so that viewers who have this program on in the background can follow along”. While such quotes are anonymous, and no streamer has gone on record to confirm that they do this, if you’ve watched much made-for-streaming content in the past few years, it probably rings somewhat true for you.

It honestly makes me feel like an alien in today’s culture, because I simply can’t do it! If I look at my phone or play video games or do my tax return or whatever while a movie or show is on, I will miss every single thing that is said and done until I look at the screen again.

If I’m watching TV, I want to watch it – I want to be immersed in the story and empathise with the characters. And if I’m not watching the TV, I want the TV to shut up. Is that weird? Apparently it is!

All this is to say that the culture of constant ambient consumption fostered by second-screen viewing has made me even more grateful for photography. The act of taking photos has become such a sanctuary for my battered, beleaguered brain, simply by virtue of the fact that you can’t do anything else while you’re using a camera. It requires two hands, two eyes, and all of your brain.

When I’m sick of screens – and I am often sick of screens – I love nothing better than getting outside and peering through a viewfinder to see what I can capture. I appreciate that I am somewhat preaching to the choir when I talk about this on the blog for Wex Photo Video dot com, but I think it merits saying and celebrating. In a world that seems to make ever greater demands on your splintered, fractured attention spans, there’s something wonderfully pure about the feeling of capturing a frame.

This extends to appreciating photography too – an exhibition hall, in a museum or gallery, is increasingly feels like a safe and protected space, one of the few remaining public spaces where it is considered gauche and unacceptable to be watching TikToks out loud on your phone (I really wish society hadn’t given up the fight against people doing that on buses and trains, but we are where we are). When I recently visited the Lee Miller retrospective at the Tate Britain, it was in a crowded space. Viewing the physical prints on the walls, unmediated by even one screen, never mind two, made me feel connected to her work in a way I hadn’t before.

So, a reminder, if any of you needed, that if you’re feeling bombarded in daily life by screens, screens and nothing but screens, and content designed under the assumption that you like it that way, getting out with the camera can be the perfect way to escape from it all.

(And yes, I know digital cameras have screens, but you get what I mean.)

About the Author

Jon Stapley is a London-based freelance writer and journalist who covers photography, art and technology. When not writing about cameras, Jon is a keen photographer who captures the world using his Olympus XA2. His creativity extends to works of fiction and other creative writing, all of which can be found on his website www.jonstapley.com