On Plato's Cave

    In Susan Sontag's On Plato's Cave, she details the various ways that "having a photographic experience becomes identical with taking a photograph of it."  One section of the article deals with travel which I found to be particularly fascinating because it echoes some of my own curiosities and observations.  On page 9 she states that photographs "help people to take possession of space in which they are insecure."  Photography has developed along with tourism because gives people an outlet in which to focus their energy when in an awkward or unfamiliar situation.  Sontag also points out that societies with "ruthless" work ethics such as the Germans, Americans, and Japanese, tend to like photography because it eases some of their anxiety about them not being at work.  

    Sontag also discusses the variety of ways in which photographs can be packaged.  Newspapers, photo albums, museums, books... photography is different from other art forms in that it does not lose as much of its essence when reproduced as say painting does.  This gives photography more options than almost any other form of art because it can be cataloged and viewed in sequence or treated as a precious object.  Painting of course could do this as well, but because the reproduction process is different, the painting reprinted becomes almost an entirely different object all together.  

For example, the two images below are two iconographic images, one a photograph and one a painting.  On this blog, we are able to view the photograph in a state much closer to its original form than that of the painting of the Birth of Venus.  The digital era truly lends itself to photography in a much truer way than any other art form.