Humanity has always had a fickle obsession with capturing the world around them and putting them into little boxes. The art of photography became a device for that. ‘On Photography’ by Susan Sontag successfully captures the elusive effect a photograph can have on a human being, and the true nature of the supposed knowledge it imparts on those who experience.
The age old phrase “a picture is worth a thousand words”, is a lie, and Sontag’s essay assures us of that. Words can carry knowledge, an ability to assure understanding in a reader, and photographs, as Sontag so astutely points out, act in the opposite manner - they eliminate understanding. Our society, as the essay to astutely points out, often takes photo’s as unassailable proof of …show more content…
Perhaps it’s a shocking one from Vietnam, of the girl charred by napalm crying as she flees down the street. It might be the old battered image of the Soviet Soldier raising his flag in the smoldering ruins of Berlin over the Reichstag, marking the end of the bloodiest conflict mankind has ever endeavored to pursue. Or maybe it’s the one of the care-worn woman from the great depression, a great sadness hiding behind her tired eyes as she cradles her children. You don’t remember any of those photo above because they were instructional, because the taught you something. Seeing the girl doesn’t inform you of the vast biological effects napalm has on the human body, it coats you in feeling of terror and disgust at such vile act. You may not remember the exact numerical value of the human cost of the second world war, but the poignant lone Soviet Soldier, wrists adorned with looted watches, imprints its sheer brutality upon you. The economic cost of the great depression falls aside, because nothing will ever resonate as strongly as the despair that reaches out of the frame and takes hold of the reader when they see the look in that woman’s …show more content…
A picture can supersede the “political and ethical knowledge” Sontag insists it can never carry. Europe barred its gates to refugees, forewarning its people of the economic and social ramifications that would result with a such a massive influx. Then a photographed emerged. Little Alayn Kurdi, three years old and extinguished, face down in the water. People didn’t see the facts anymore, the photograph blinded them. With that photograph Alayn Kurdi became a symbol of the human cost of the desperation of the migrants, and his lifeless body left the world thinking, “what if that was my son?”. The outpour of pity could not be satisfied by mere facts. How could they hold up the weight of such a travesty? Years of political walls and ethical discussions were drowned in the tsunami of emotion that followed the circulation of the photograph. Germany let in over a million refugees within the first year, for better for worse. No study or impassioned essay could of provoked it – yet a man with camera did. As social media flooded with pictures of happy, grateful refugees, the darker consequences were already brewing. Nevertheless the German “addiction of aesthetic consumerism” had been satisfied through a celebration of “feel-good-look-good” photography to rid them of a need that the very same art had allowed to originate. Facts are boring, yet valuable. Photos can be moving, yet blasé