There are a large variety of uses and meanings of photographs. Some photographs are used in order to tell stories in many diverse ways. Others use photographs for the purpose of capturing a particular moment in time and to help viewers feel and form a connection with what is happening in the photograph. I personally believe that photography can both reveal and conceal reality in the form of a still image.

In Susan Sontag’s essay, “On Photography”, she speaks about how photography can belittle or change the idea of certain events that are captured on camera and how it is a form of art that can capture and keep real parts of life. On page 14 she begins to describe how “there is something predatory in the act of taking a picture. To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed.” This adds on to Sontag’s idea because it shows how photography is able to capture something that may have not been seen by the subject itself, making it “violating” a person’s privacy. It also shows how although a photographer is able to have a clear vision of what he or she wants to capture in his/or photography, it may be different in the eyes of a different viewer (in both negative and positive ways).

In Elena Martinique’s article, “When Staged Photography Becomes Art” she speaks a lot on how photography used to mostly be a “decided moment” indicating that much of it used to be staged. She states how a “pioneer of the genre, Jeff Wall makes large-scale color images that seem to capture people engaged in everyday life, but are in fact largely staged. He described his work as cinematography, boiling it down to preparation, doing things in advance before taking the picture, and collaboration, having contact with people being photographed.” This shows how photography conceals reality because photographers back then used to stage every image even though the photograph itself looks like it was taken spontaneously.

These two pieces of writing support my idea about how photography and still images can either hide reality or bring awareness to it even more.