Leslie Mullen’s Truth in Photography

 “Photography can change the way we look at the world”. I agree with this sentence. Photography can change a person's view of the world but literally and metaphorically. Abstract works literally distort an image forcing the viewer to look at the subject in a way they could not before. Photos can also open the viewer's eyes to a truth about the world they did not see before. Such as war photography. People used to be able to disconnect from war because they could not see what it was like, but after photographers started taking photos of war zones the war was brought to the people and they could no longer ignore it. They could now view the effects and devastation that war left behind.

“Photography approaches art insofar as it is made or created with skill”. I also agree that photography is a form of art. While it is true that nowadays anyone can take a picture on their phone, true photography takes skill and hard work to make. Because of the years of practice and the amount of work that goes into taking a good photograph I believe that it is a form of art. Photography can also be used to express oneself just like any other form of art.

“At times, artists have been mere tools, used by those in power to convince the masses of a particular ideology. Artists often were commissioned by the church or ruling government to create work espousing religious doctrine or political ideologies. According to John Merryman and Albert Elsen, the concept of the artist as a political and cultural rebel is a modern idea”. Just like painters photographers were also taken advantage of and used by the government and Churches to try and brainwash the masses. They used photography to spread their message and ideologies. People figured that since these messages were photographed they must be true. And since photography was not seen as an art form it was hard for artists to use it to express themselves.

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