Photographs
…a way of giving information to people
who do not take easily to reading.

In a world ruled by photographic images,
all borders (“framing”) seem arbitrary.
Anything can be separated, can be made discontinuous,
from everything else: all that is necessary
is to frame the subject differently.

Photography reinforces a nominalist view of social reality
as consisting of small units of an apparently infinite number…
Through photographs the world becomes a series of unrelated,
freestanding particles…

The camera makes reality atomic, manageable, and opaque.

The ultimate wisdom of the photographic image is to say:
“There is the surface. Now think — or rather feel, intuit
–what is beyond it, what reality must be like if it looks this way.”

In contrast to the amorous relation,
which is based on how something looks,
understanding is based on how it functions.
And functioning takes place in time, and must be explained in time.
Only that which narrates can make us understand.

–excerpt On Photography, In Plato’s Cave, by Susan Sontag p. 22-23

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I debated with myself whether to comment upon what Sontag wrote.  On one hand her words stand alone, sufficient to make the point.  Inevitably a lot has changed since the publication in 1973 making the truth both more plain and less plain to see.

It is less plain to see due to the inception of high speed internet, ubiquitous, a network of server farms and satellites which allow access to video presentation of images anywhere, anytime.  This is the crux of propaganda, the “framing” which the image entails.  Unaided perception is frame-less, demanding that the mind integrate the fabric of sense perception as well as the audible and the tactile…  With the framing of the image, the photographer chooses the frame, isolates the subject from everything else.  Or better put, subtly forces the focus.

This is the crux of propaganda.

This is more plain to see — if you use an iphone, you are addicted to images.  According to a use monitoring app I spent over two hours per day screen-time this past week.

Only that which narrates can make us understand…