Decision-making about whether something stinks or smells nice simply does not allow for objective observation and, often, even the subjective decision is made with great difficulty. But one thing is certain, and that is that there are smells that just do not fit into the world as we see it.
Pictures possess the advantage, normally, of not emitting any smell: so we can imagine whatever we like about it with in the olfactory sense. But as a rule we imagine nothing; we find the picture neutral in terms of smell – in other words, smell-free. Even when something that we know stinks is portrayed in the picture we do not, most of the time, associate it with a smell. It’s an interesting experiment to imagine ourselves as a self-portrait that emits various smells: sometimes the smell of orange peel, sometimes of strong ox dung, a slice of Camembert, spruce perfume, or of an unwashed piss pot. The impact of the picture is different with each association – and the legend/caption that we write about it varies according to the particular smell that accompanies the picture.
How greatly a smell influences not just our perception of the world but also our attitude can be gauged from (our experience on) the street: there may be the most enchanting creature floating past us in a street, but if the street is smelling of dog shit at that moment, we are unable to give the creature even the vestige of a smile.
The striking difference between the experience of a place and the impression conveyed by a picture of the place is therefore not the result of different perspectives alone, but also the result of various olfactory realities.
Today, the Internet brings us pictures from every nook and cranny of the world and this development has led pessimists to get scent of the media-wrought shrinkage of the world. They assume that on our journeys we will only find something that travel agencies, tour guides and prospects have long liked to din into our heads – the journey would as such be a tautological tour. The fact that no smell arises from the pictures alone takes the wind out of the sails of such theories/theses. Internet pictures cannot be a replacement or substitution for a real-life experience of the world. The world tells us stories that are totally different from those portrayed by the pictures on the Net. This however does not mean that the pictures are superfluous, not at all; on the contrary, they help us to see things that would otherwise remain invisible. We need them in order to recognise more of the beauty of the world.
First Publication: 23-1-2013
Modifications: 23-6-2013