Photography is simple yet versatile. With just the press of a button, any moment in time can be immortalized. Additionally, its ubiquitous nature has made a significant impact on various fields of study as well as our personal lives. Photography is used in academia as a form of reference, in media to tell stories and spread messages; it’s a method of capturing meaningful memories of friends and family and as an art to introduce ideas, pose questions and display emotions. Susan Sontag and Roland Barthes both provide their input on multifaceted and arduous questions, such as: What is the meaning of a photograph? What role do photographs play in our society? How does one look at photographs and proceed to “understand” them? On Photography (by …show more content…
But many, through photographs, have discovered beauty.” (Sontag pg. 85). Here, Sontag argues that when it comes to photography, no one purposefully takes a picture of something ugly, but rather photographs it because the photographer sees beauty in the subject. Sontag brings up the role of the camera and how it has been a big factor in beautifying the world. In fact, she goes on to say that, “photographs, rather than the world, have become the standard of the beautiful.” (Sontag pg. 85). With advancements in technology and the introduction of photo-editing, Sontag is more and more convinced that photography, and the reality it creates in it of itself, is shaping the way people view the real world and their aesthetic judgements. She mentions, “In recent decades, photography has succeeded in somewhat revising, for everybody, the definitions of what is beautiful and ugly…” (Sontag pg. 28). Alongside the idea of beauty, Sontag also dives into the topic of photography in relation to tourism. She does this by saying that photographs, “... help people to take possession of space in which they are insecure.” (Sontag pg. 9). Sontag implies that the activity of tourism puts people in strange and uncharted territories, places where one may feel uneasy being at. She further suggests that the camera becomes a way of experiencing travel, an apparatus that separates the tourist …show more content…
One example photograph he uses is the one taken by Charles Clifford in the year 1854 called “The Alhambra (Grenada)”. Barthes immediately notices the intricate details of the photograph and proceeds to list them out, “ An old house, a shadowy porch, tiles, a crumbling Arab decoration, a man sitting against the wall, a deserted street, a Mediterranean tree…” (Barthes pg. 38). Following his description of the photograph, Barthes mentions a key detail which is that the old photograph touches him. The fact that it touches Barthes is significant to him because it indicates that the environment he sees within the photograph is one that he is comfortable or familiar with, so much to the point where he says that he should like to live there (Barthes pg. 38). Although Barthes doesn’t mention anything about the operator, spectator, and spectrum, it is already clear, through his choice of example and description, who and what makes up those components. Another piece of information that Barthes left out was the studium and the punctum of the photograph. Nonetheless, the composition of these two elements can also be
Susan Sontag once wrote, “To collect photographs is to collect the world.” In her article entitled “On Photography,” she overviews the nature of photography and its relation to people using it. Sontag discusses photography’s ability to realistically capture the past rather than an interpretation of it, acting as mementos that become immortal. Continuing on to argue the authenticity of photography and how its view points have shifted from art into a social rite.With the use of rhetorical devices, Sontag scrutinizes the characteristics of photography and its effects on surrounding affairs; throughout this article Sontag reiterates the social rites, immortality and authenticity of photographs, and the act of photography becoming voyeuristic. With the use of the rhetorical devices pathos, appeal of emotion, ethos, appeal to ethics and credibility, and logos, appeal to logic, Sontag successfully persuades the audience to connect and agree with her views.
Camera Lucida was Roland Barthes’ last written piece, published posthumously in 1980. This book deals with the topic of photography and the death of Barthes’ mother in 1977. The role of photography is questioned; he asks what about photography makes it a valid media? We read about the operator (the photographer), spectrum (the subject) and spectator (the viewer), also about the studium (what we see in the photograph) and the punctum (the unclassifiable, the thing that makes the photograph important to the viewer). According to Barthes the photograph is an adventure for the viewer, but it is ultimately death, the recording of something that will be dead after the picture is taken. This idea is the main focus of Barthes’ writing, the photograph “that-has-been”, in Latin “interfuit: what I see has been here, in this place which extends between infinity and the subject; it has been here, and yet immediately separated; it has been absolutely, irref...
In the essay “Why We Take Pictures” by Susan Sontag, she argues that taking photos can be a tool of power and sometimes even a defense against anxiety(353). Taking pictures can be a great source of power, according to Sontag. The photographer has the power to show what they want and people can choose whether or not to be in the photo. Sontag uses the example of a family photo; as some family photos portray the family being happy, many people cannot see that the family might not actually be as happy as they look. Sontag also uses examples like nuclear families and traveling in order to enforce her claims about picture taking. In a nuclear family, Sontag believes that taking a picture of that family can help relieve some anxiety because people
Death is a striking image that sits heavily in the heart, however an image of tragedy in the daily live is a much heavier weight to carry. Children filling up bottles of water in a refugee camp are horrific but when the location is in Africa is anyone really surprised. Susan Sontag’s “double message” (263) from her essay on “Regarding the Pain of Others” is shown in the CNN.com article “U.N. declares famine in Somalia; makes urgent appeal to save lives” due to the known situation of poverty, corruption, and a weak government. In this essay, I will address first the image and its connection to Sontag via censorship, and the shock value of the photograph. I will then address how the article complicates the photograph. Finally, I will address how both the photograph and the article complicate Sontag’s “double message”
Sontag, Susan. "Essay | Photography Enhances Our Understanding of the World." BookRags. BookRags. Web. 15 Apr. 2014.
The motivation behind “Watching Suffering from a Distance” by Susan Sontag, is to let everyone know that they should have knowledge of the evil that humanity commits. She is writing to inform the general public that they should not shy away from bad news. According to Sontag, those who are incessantly astonished that people can inflict harm on one another and haven’t accepted the idea that evil and corruption exists, have not reached adulthood. She says, “No one after a certain age has the right to this kind of innocence, of superficiality, to this degree of ignorance, or amnesia” (437). We regularly see advertisements requesting that we give money to help spare the starving youngsters in an underdeveloped nation. Yet more often than not we simply switch channels or decide to overlook this because we don’t want to believe this. Ignorance is not bliss.
For the purpose of this argument I will explore the image in the context using Barthes methodology in its “signs” (Barthes 1972) produced and deconstruct the image in basic building blocks.
Interpretation of meaning behind photographs assumes that they are a means of communication (Entin, 1979). Much like family storytelling, photographs indicate relationships within and among the family. The family photo album is indeed an easy way to initiate outsiders to family history (Boerdam, Martinius, 1980)...
In the book, the Barthes creates some terms. Operator, Spectator and Spectrum are the first one. The Operator means the photographer, the viewer who looks at the Photograph becomes the Spectator and the thing emitted by subject is called eidolon(image, phantom, ghost), in other word the Spectrum. Barthes talks about Operator’s ability to take the picture of naturalness from the situation. He says that a Photograph is closer to the Spectator than the Operator and the Spectrum is the closest one. The stream of his thought naturally moves from the subject of the picture to viewers with excluding the person taking a picture. It was interesting for the artists like me because for artists, the subject matter goes first and then the work is created later. Particularly, for me, considering viewers mostly comes at the end or sometime, I even ignore the audience. For a viewer like Barthes, seeing the work is a completely opposite way to creating the work.
“Recently, photography has become almost as widely practiced an amusement as sex and dancing, which means that, like every mass art form, photography is not practiced by most people as an art. It is mainly a social rite, a defense against anxiety, and a tool of power” (Sontag 8). After reading this quote in my head multiple times, I started to realize that people use it for different purposes. When I took a photography class in college, it was under the category “art.” Which made me think of it as a form of art, when there are so many other ways to view photography. Sontag changed my opinion about photography after further interpreting her quote because to have a camera in our hand, being able to capture the world through our lens is to have a tool of
As seen in paintings of battle scenes and portraits of wealthy Renaissance aristocracy, people have always strived to preserve and document their existence. The creation of photography was merely the logical continuum of human nature’s innate desire to preserve the past, as well as a necessary reaction to a world in a stage of dramatic and irreversible change. It is not a coincidence that photography arose in major industrial cities towards the end of the nineteenth century.
In chapter 1 “On Photography” Susan Sontag explains her point of view on photography and the way people have become dependent on images in various ways in the sense of experiencing the value of someone or something. Society believes that photography makes that experience something tangible, a part of the world that they can call their own. Photographers occasionally infringe their own preferences by choosing different lighting, filters, or angles in their pictures so they end up changing the reality outside of Plato’s cave. At the same time, Sontag expresses her feeling of dislike towards photography as a symbolic rape turning people that have been photographed into property because we have knowledge of them that they can never have back for
Women desire to become beautiful and powerful, even if they don’t say it in words. And the Photographer plays with that concept and creates that desire, that you can become that person you see in the photograph. And live that lifestyle. Photographers use techniques from the cinema/cinematic, to create the desire of viewers/Buyer/Consumers. The cinematic techniques made it possible the way people lived and the...
To begin with, photography appeared to me as something entertaining a simple step in which one took a camera and simply shot a photograph of oneself or a friend. When I was handed my schedule for Mrs. Jones’s class, I felt as if this class had in store a special reward for me. As the days went by, Instead of being anxious of getting out of class I had a craving for additional time in the class. The class kept my eyes glued to the screen ...
Photojournalism plays a critical role in the way we capture and understand the reality of a particular moment in time. As a way of documenting history, the ability to create meaning through images contributes to a transparent media through exacting the truth of a moment. By capturing the surreal world and presenting it in a narrative that is relatable to its audience, allows the image to create a fair and accurate representation of reality.