Susan Sontag In Plato's Cave

 “The inventory started in 1839 and since then just about everything has been photographed, or so it seems”. Being able to photograph anything was convenient. Events and fleeting moments were never able to be captured before. But with a photograph, you could capture a moment and keep it forever in near-perfect detail. It's like a memory frozen in time. As cameras became more advanced and modern we started to capture more and more of our daily lives. As of today, I bet that almost every major event in our lives is photographed.

“In teaching us a new visual code, photographs alter and enlarge our notions of what is worth looking at and what we have a right to observe”. Because people were able to capture anything and keep it as a memory, people started photographing everything because they never wanted to forget anything. Since so many things were photographed artists had to start looking at things differently in order to be original in their work. Photography also pushes the boundaries of what could and should be photographed. Examples of this are street photography and nude photography. Both expose people in a vulnerable state. In street photography, the subject is unaware of the photographer until it is too late and they don’t get the chance to hide anything. In nude photography the subject is literally exposed, there is no part of them that can hide from the camera.

“Finally, the most grandiose result of the photographic enterprise is to give us the sense that we can hold the whole world in our heads—as an anthology of images. To collect photographs is to collect the world”. When you hold a photograph it truly feels like you are holding the world. Something like a building that would be impossible to actually hold can be held as a photograph. You can see and hold any part of the world without ever having to actually go there. And with modern space photography, you can actually hold the entire world in your hands.