I’ve noticed a trend in recent months, though it’s possible that the spread is limited to a certain type of tech-savvy twenty-thirtysomething.

The trend is this: to document rather than participate in events.

They go along to a rally, performance, event and where in the past they might have merely been participant, audience or witness to or of an event, these days they’re more likely to record and document what happens, through words and pictures.

Gay marriages in San Francisco. Demonstrations in New York, London, elsewhere. Events both ordinary and extraordinary. It seems that part of the experience of observation is the need to capture it, somehow.

Is this part of the ongoing scavanger hunt for blog fodder? Is this the repressed professional journalist/photographer we always hear about, lurking within every blogger?

Does the photographer get more out of the experience by recording it and presenting it as a packaged experience for others? Or does the experience of documenting the event excuse them from active participation, allowing them to become an active arm’s-length witness rather than passive participant.

In any group of friends, there’s usually someone who has a camera, which is produced at parties, days out, dinners and so on, allowing the person who wields it to experience the events of their social group through a lens, at arm’s-length, without fully commiting to being involved.

In a way, playing the role of photographer lets a person off the hook from having to actually participate, experience, witness these things.

But beyond that, it provides the individual with a role beyond the actual experience. I think it’s fair to say that people don’t always know what to do with themselves, unless they have an assigned role.

The question is, do they ever leave the cameras behind and simply protest, applaud, observe, participate?

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with this - I find myself doing it, too.