After reading both the first chapter of On Photography by Susan Sontag and Elena Martinique’s “When Staged Photography Becomes Art” I feel like photographs always reveal something, regardless of if they were meticulously composed or if they were “natural.”

Sontag’s essay includes various ways photographs can reveal, and one way is by giving us a path to the past. Photographs freeze moments in time, allowing viewers to access and engage with those moments anytime they want. In this sense, photographs reveal a different kind of reality, presenting the past in a tangible form that can be revisited and shared with others. They reflect the values, norms, and ideologies of the society in which they were taken in, so they have the capacity to serve as historical documents, offering insights into the context in which they were produced. Martinique adds onto this notion, sharing how although some photographs throughout history have been staged, they are still able to convey “the events, environments or emotions” of the time they were taken in.

Sontag also shares, “Photographs furnish evidence. Something we hear about, but doubt, seems proven when we’re shown a photograph of it” (Sontag, 12.) This underscores the power of photographs to reveal the visual truth of the world, because people believe much more than what they hear. I can’t think of a historical example, however through more advanced photographs, we’ve discovered new kinds of stars are able to determine the position of different planets, and more. At the same time, however, Martinique argues that photographs are selective, because they frame and isolate elements within a limited visual field. Some may argue that that creates a superficial sense of reality, and hides authenticity. However, this just makes photography equivalent to any other form of art. There is a reason why photographers choose to conceal certain things, and by analyzing that, we learn more about them and the time period they lived in than if all pictures were family portraits. Martinique herself asserts that we should understand photographs “as we read the world around us… [one] full of uses, values and meanings.”

Essentially, photographs are selective by nature as they capture not only events and environments but also emotions and values. They are, as both authors propose, a medium to be read and interpreted, whether staged or spontaneous.