In the first chapter of Susan Sontag's, "On Photography", she discusses her ideas about photography itself as well as how it can be, and has been used as a way to capture and represent our reality in different ways. Sontag descibes photography as a method of capturing life moments and appreciates that they can be looked back upon and remebered for as long as the image may be preseved. She also shares a couple of interpretations about what the act of taking a photo could mean such as photography being a form of creating evidence, a method of changing the scale of the world, and a form of violating whatever is being taken a photo of (someone or something). I found her ideas about photography to be quite interesting and they made me realize that I don't particularly spend a lot of time thinking about photography itself, despite taking photos almost every single day. The last mentioned interpretation in one of Sontags lines which stood to me the most and was when she said,
"Like guns and cars, cameras are fantasy‐machines whose use is addictive. However, despite the extravagances of ordinary language and advertising, they are not lethal. In the hyperbole that markets cars like guns, there is at least this much truth: except in wartime, cars kill more people than guns do. The camera/gun does not kill, so the ominous metaphor seems to be all bluff ! like a man's fantasy of having a gun, knife, or tool between his legs. Still, there is something predatory in the act of taking a picture. To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed. Just as the camera is a sublimation of the gun, to photograph someone is a sublimated murder! a soft murder, appropriate to a sad, frightened time".Whenever I take a photo, it is meaningful to me as it represents the exact moment that I was in a certain area, at a certain time. The statue of liberty for example is something that has been photographed by thousands and maybe even millions of people already, but at some point in my life when I personally saw the Statue of liberty, I still took a photo of it anyways. I agree with Sontags claim here that the uses of cameras are addictive. There are cameras on almost every gadget that I use each day, from my phone, ipad, and my laptop. At the start, it was once unconventional for deivces like an ipad or laptop to have camera installed onto them, but overtime, the enjoyment for taking photos has grown throughout our society. I guess oyu could say that every time a photograph is taken of lady Liberty, "she" is violated by the abuse of our cameras. To one person, the statue of liberty might be seen as a cool tourist attraction, or to others, a great artwork and gift from france to the united states. From each persons perspective, a photo object is captured in a different way and carries a different meaning to them. I also agree with Sontags claim that the camera/gun does not kill, but I do think that the act of taking a photo can be dangerous in some cases. For example, if someone is taking photos of a stranger without their consent, that could be considered a form of violation. Overall, I think that photography is a powerful tool that can be used to capture and represent our reality in different ways, but it is important to be mindful of how we use it and the potential implications it may have on others.
In my own life use photography and image making as a way to capture the things around, as well as the moments that I find to be meaningful. Taking a photo for example, allows me to capture one specific moment in time, and turn it into a longlife memory that I can look back on and even share with others. Photography allows me to express my perspective on different situations in a way that words sometimes cannot and gives me the opportunity to reflect more on the life I've experienced so far. Without photography, many of the well captured and documented moments in history would have been lost to time and having the chance to take photos myself, of whatever I choose, is a privelage that I will never take for granted.
My favorite things to incoorporate in image making are items and people who I find impressionable in my life. I love illustrating people from my point of view and drawing others is my way of showing them how they make me feel. If I'm not directly drawing somebody, I still enjoy drawing for them whether it be something that they request, or things that I know they would like to see. Still life, landscape, and flowers are also my favorite things to draw because they represent the vibrancy of mundane life. At this very moment, I could come up with a multitude of different ways to combine images and text notions in order to represent our world. If I were to create a piece of artwork that did this, I would photograph meaningful events such as protests occur around my area such as outside of my school, advertisements that indirectly reveal the political climate of today, and casual images of what life right now is like. Scrolling on the internet will reveal to you so many meaningful images that speak beyond words and could be understood by anyone who sees them even without text. Despite this, certain text accompaniying the images I create could help to further explain the context of the images and give the viewer a deeper understanding of what is being represented. Overall, I believe that photography and image making are powerful things that can be used to express complex ideas and emotions. Text notions serve a great purpose in furthering the viewer's understanding of their meanings.