Why We Take Pictures By Susan Sontag

Although a memory may deteriorate over the span of years or even decades, a photograph will last a lifetime. Images are more than an object to have for safe keeping. In his article, “We Are A Camera,” Nick Paumgarten discusses the uprising of the popular recording device known as the GoPro. This device is used to record events and experiences from different perspectives, whether that is from underwater or zip lining through a forest in a first-person view. Moreover, videos and photography allow people to capture images to reminisce about past experiences, to share these moments with others, and even remember those whom you have lost.

The last point is that technology has made it easier to capture and treasure these memories. Dickerson has said that he has captured more on his iPhone than his pen. “It has improved the process of engaging with life through pausing to capture it” (256). Due to this new technological revolution we can now record all of our lives and it only takes a second to capture instead of sitting still for a picture and waiting for our pictures to

For many years photojournalism has been considered a transformative form of media, meaning that through the use of photographs photojournalism has the ability to transform our way of thinking by reconstructing the conscious of our society. Photojournalism achieves this effect by forcing society to reconsider its actions as it relates to humanity by using photographs to both illicit emotions and cause reactions that, if done properly can result in social change. Photojournalism is an important branch of visual media when

Sontag believes that photography limits the understanding of the world however, contrary to this claim, I believe that photography does not limit the understanding of the world, but rather enhances it.

According to Barnes “Autism is found throughout the world in families of all racial, ethnic, and socio-economic backgrounds.”(Barnes 2015). Grandin also explains her experiences living with autism in her novel Thinking in Pictures. Grandin acquired her the ability to create and imagine through her visual thinking. In contrast, one barrier that hindered her was her inability to comprehend or associate social cues and emotion to a picture. With this in mind, Grandin using her natural talents to learn enabled her to push through what most people consider an accessibility issue.

In Freeman Patterson’s Barriers to Seeing, Patterson mentions a quote from Susan Sontag about cameras and experiences. Sontag writes, “‘A way of certifying experience, taking photographs is also a way of refusing it – by limiting the experience to a search for the photogenic, by converting into an image, a souvenir’” (Paragraph 12). Essentially, Sontag is elaborating how people are distracted from their surroundings and experiences to find a photogenic picture or to record what they think to be an experience. While the objective of photography is usually to capture an experience or feeling, many are instead obsessed with finding good lighting, searching for a good background, and are focused on taking the best picture to post on social media. In many cases this is very true, and I myself can see it in people’s photos as well as my own. In Freeman Patterson’s Barriers to Seeing,” he quotes Susan Sontag’s statement that one’s camera can be a barrier to seeing and experiencing a moment. Through other’s picture taking as well

Before starting this project, I knew very little about photography, photographers, or exactly how much impact photographical images have had on our society. I have never taken a photography class, or researched too in depth about specific pictures or photographers. This project has allowed me to delve deeper into the world of photography in order to understand just how much influence pictures can have over society’s beliefs, emotions, and understandings’. I have have chosen two highly influential photographers, Diane Arbus and Dorothea Lange, who I have found to both resonate with me and perfectly capture human emotions in way that moves others.

Photographers have the ability to capture a certain moment in their lifetime. Some of them take advantage of the image in front of them and some do not fully understand the purpose of the moment. Is it worth recording the moment? Everyday people take images on their cell phones because they want to share them with friends and family. In 1993, Kevin Carter went on a trip to Sudan and took a picture of a starving Sudanese girl being stalked by a vulture. However, what photographers, like Kevin Carter, fail to realize is that every time a picture is taken, a part of the individual photographed is taken away. Kevin Carter’s presentation of the starving child serves not only as a claim of the ignorance of American people, but also as the measures

According to KPCB’s internet trends report, in 2014 nearly 1.8 billion digital images were uploaded online everyday. That’s not even including the number of photos that were taken and not uploaded. Taking photos has been simplified to opening an app on ones cell phone and pressing one button. Now a days everyone can take photos. Although many view photography as an every day occurrence, photography can be used as a powerful tool for social justice, documenting history, citizen journalism, and marketing.

The photo can stir something within us; make us look within our being. The photo should not frighten or stigmatize, rather it should be reflective to cause a revolution (Barthes, Camera Lucida, 38). For the contemplation component of examining photography begins only after it executes a feeling within us (Brown, 29). There are photos that we view that make us say “this one is saying something for me” or “this exists for me”. Diana Markosian, photographer of the project 1915 did exactly this in her work. Markosian is a photojournalist who captures photos by immersing herself into the community in which she is photographing. Her photos are very intimate and bring in a mystery of past times, the place between the dimensions of memory and place

Sontag claims that “photography is, a social rite, but it can also be a defense against anxiety and a tool of power (page 130).” She backs her claim by stating “photographs give people an imaginary possession of a past that is unreal, they also help people to take possessions of space in which they are insecure.” (Sontag page 131). In other words, having pictures allows people to tell stories that may not be exactly true. I agree with Sontag because I have witnessed and experienced how pictures can hurt someone emotionally while empowering others.

Susan Sontag discusses the reality of the modern person’s addiction with “needing to have reality confirmed” by photos. Sontag says “we accept it as the camera records it” then goes to say “this is the opposite of understanding.” I agree with her wholeheartedly, as accepting photos as they are limits ones understanding of the world. The trust in photography led to the rise of pictures hoaxes, in which people take pictures out of context and assign it a new background; as well as Photoshop, which becomes increasingly popular as the years go by. Photoshop allows one to manipulate a photo to portray what they desire it to.

Ever since the invention of cameras in 1839, the photographic image and its steady progression has molded reality. The book On Photography by Susan Sontag, is a book of many ideologies and aspects. The main aspect of this book is how pure reality is being captured through photography. Through history, reality has been associated with images and philosophers who have subsequently diminished our trust on representations by directing our eyes at ways to grasp reality through paintings and images. Susan Sontag says that in the modern day and age, we prefer to take photographs of the reality. This is widely accepted in modern culture, because we are always “producing and consuming photographs to such a degree that photography has been made

Photography matters in society because people form emotional attachments to their pictures. “When you ask people what possessions they would rescue from their burning house, one of the most frequent answers is the photograph album or a computer with their digital images. When in panic mode it’s interesting that we would probably grab photos rather than valuable jewelry” (Digital Photography School). This quotation explains that people form emotional attachments to their photos because they depicted the story of their lives. People bring cameras and now their cell phones to document events in their daily lives to look back at moments they captured. People would most likely grab photograph album or digital images from a burning house rather than jewelry because people value the memories that have been recorded through their lives more than other objects. This tells us how much photography takes a role in our lives and our desire to save the most valued memories into photos. People form emotional attachment to photographs in other ways, too. According to the Digital Photography School website, that talks and explains things about photograph say’s Photographs are our personal story, a timeline of our lives filled with faces and places that we love. They are our story, which we can share with others. The hundreds of images come together to form a narrative of our lives. Photograph is now one of the most known equipment to create arts. people always take pictures wherever they

Susan Sontag said photographs sends across the harmlessness and helplessness of the human life steering into their own ruin. Furthermore the bond connecting photography with departure from life tortures the human race. (Sontag 1977:64)