Friday, January 27, 2012

Susan Sontag’s “On Photography”

“To collect photographs is to collect the world.”

I have heard quotes by Susan Sontag many times and was very interested to read an entire article written by her. The quote above struck me as particularly interesting. Ever since the camera came out, people have used it as a way to document the world and as a learning tool. Gone are the days where you could only see a famous painting if you had the means to travel to that location to see the original. However, I feel that we rely too heavily of photographs these days. We take what we see as fact and generally do not stop to consider how the context (whether in a book, article or on film) may have skewed the original meaning. While the camera and photographs are an amazing, life-changing technology with which we can essentially “collect the world”, it is still important to consider the context and do a little investigating before taking the image at face value. 

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