Photography Changes Everything Response

For me, photography is the ability to isolate a piece of the world. While the picture you’ve taken can be altered to be almost completely unrecognizable there is always a part of it that was originally part of the real world. I used camera’s as a way to document my life, I’d take pictures around the house and when my dad and I went on vacation. The photographs I’d collect were always of animals and places far away from where I lived. Nowadays I use photography to send my drawings to friends far away. In a sense, I trusted photography to show me the parts of the world that I couldn’t reach. I’m very aware of the edits people make and how convincing they can be, however, it's hard for me to separate photographs from the world. Even if it’s not the real world it could still be someone else’s “world”.

As the article discusses, photography accessible more than ever. The visible literacy that comes with images both photographed and none are becoming further entrenched in our culture. This culture of visual literacy is made of those that are constantly in the know and anyone that missed it will find it incredibly difficult to get into it. The context and descriptions of photographs are ripped away as the photo is sent from group to group with a completely different meaning than it originally had. This is because another viewing someone else’s “world” can have a very different perception than the photographer.

Photography is something that’s becoming more and more inseparable from our lives. While I’m not a part of the movement of documenting your entire life with pictures, though I still do it a fair amount. Video was developed from photography and while it’s become just as important, not even it fully eclipsed the power of photography. I don’t think there’s anything that we could make that would truly replace the role photography has, anything else would just be its latest incarnation like how it moved from film to digital. Whether it’s documenting the real or a personal world it’s something inseparable from our lives.