Philosophy of Photography

Philosophy of Photography is a cluster of research activities that’s concerned with the role of the mechanically produced and digitally disseminated image in contemporary culture. Researching said topic allowed me to understanding photography from a unique and different perspective.

Theorists such as Susan Sontag compare the media that we consume today to Plato's cave. In the allegory of the cave, Plato distinguishes between people who mistake sensory knowledge for the truth and the people who see the actual truth. What Sontag implies is that the hundreds of photographs that we come across each day are a mere representation, a small fragmentation of the truth, we see one frame of a larger picture we don't have access to. We are shown a specific plot line, a specific message that was curated by the creator whose intentions we don't know.

 John Berger's Ways of Seeing art program studies European art history and how reproduction of art through photographs separates their context from what was originally intended. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and this makes the eye center of the visible world. The invention of camera changed perception of the world of how we see things and the easy reproduction of images has messed with the value of the paintings.

Vilem Flusser takes a more mystical approach towards cameras as he explained we have no idea about the inner technology of a camera. He comments on how automated our lives have become. The more automated the camera is, the easier it makes for us to operate it as it is up to the camera to decide how to work thus, leading us to giving up control and freedom gradually. Unlike photographers and chess players, they do not look for new moves, for information but wish to make their function simpler by means of perfect automation. We are programmed by the machine. Flusser's philosophy invites us to reflect upon our interaction with photography and technology and the role it takes up in our lives.