Category Archives: How Does Photography Impact You

Prompt: How does photography impact you?

As we discussed in our first class, a photograph can be a lot of things. With impacts in culture, identity, society, politics, family, and more, photography, whether you are the taker, subject, or audience, is highly influential in how we perceive ourselves. Identify at least one way in which photography impacts your perception.

In the beginning of In Plato’s Cave, Sontag writes “photographs alter and enlarge our notions of what is worth looking at and what we have a right to observe.” She goes on to define the ways photography has emerged as a new “grammar and, even more importantly, an ethics of seeing”.

Use (at least 3) specific examples from Sontag’s essay On Photography to build an argument that supports the impacts photography has had on your perception.