In Plato's Cave

            “Today everything exists to end in a photograph.” (p. 24). With today’s digital age, this has become increasingly true. Instead of seeing the world through our own eyes, we’ve begun to see the world through a computer screen. Society is living in Plato’s Cave, and yet seems to have no idea that it is stuck there. People are not comfortable going out into the world to take in all it has to offer. Instead they are content to just capture the basic form and shadow of the world through a photograph. According to the world, as Sontag puts it, “to photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed” (p. 4). So through seeing something, however briefly it may be, if you take a photograph of it, then it is forever yours to have in print or as a digital file stored away on a hard drive. It seems as if the world is trying to replace experiences and memories with a crude snapshot that doesn’t even come close to the actual sight. People travel the world not to immerse themselves in local culture and experience all a new place has to offer, but to walk through a town with video camera in hand, recording every second as if filming a documentary. When I see such tourists, I often wonder if those videos are ever seen again, or if they’re stored off in a corner to only be forgotten.

            In her explanation of the extent that society is stuck in Plato’s Cave, Sontag compares today’s cameras to a car. In this day and age, everyone attempts to take the easy way out, with absolutely everything being completely automated. Cars can now start with the push of a button without the driver even being in the car. Documents are automatically formatted on a computer, and our words are finished for us in even the shortest of text messages. Cameras are no different, now with the capability of waiting to take a photograph until everyone in it is smiling with their eyes open. No thought is needed anymore when taking a photograph clearly separating photography as art, a true representation of the world, and photography as a means for immortalizing a memory. This has extended past mere automation to a lost of interaction with the subject of the photograph. Like the automatic check-out lines and ATMs which take away the need to interact with actual people, the simplicity of “just aim, focus, and shoot” (p. 14) that cameras provide allow amateur photographers and tourists to just snap a shot. People very rarely take the time to interact with the world around them, taking the time to set up a photograph, examining a subject at all angles before moving on to the next sight.

            Sontag classifies photography as “a neat slice of time, not a flow” (p. 17). It is a single second that only happened once, and will never happen again in the exact same way.  Much of modern society is failing to see the world this way and taking for granted all that they come in contact with. To be a true photographer one must actually be seeing the world around them, not simply looking for a brief moment before moving on. Photography is having a relationship with your surroundings, immersing yourself completely before stepping back to capture the elements. Just as a concert attendee will better appreciate a piece of music if they have prior knowledge of the piece, knowing what to listen for, one is only a true photographer when they don’t simply see what they are capturing, but become a part of it and know where to find all the small details. Through photographs we can know about the world, granted we “accept it as the camera records it” (p. 23). The current generation that did not live through the Holocaust and both World Wars can see the horrors that were created through the photographs taken of barren battlefields and liberated concentration camps. Future generations will know about the destruction that took place on 9/11 but see the hope and unity it brought to our country through photographs of Ground Zero and the subsequent memorials to the lost. But just as history is told by the victors, photographs can be one-sided and deceiving, defying what Sontag refers to as “narrowly selective transparency” (p. 6). During the Westward Expansion period, very few photographs portrayed the Native Americans in a positive light, only depicting the several instances when they were victorious in a battle with American soldiers. Tabloid magazines take advantage of misleading photographs to start a scandal in order to earn money, and political campaigns will take anything of their opponents and spin it in their favor.

            In Plato’s Cave, society was ignorant of their surroundings, in The Phantom Tollbooth, author Norton Juster described a town that essentially was nothing, because the townspeople were too busy running from place to place to look up and notice their surroundings so it just simply disappeared. With our society going the direction it is, soon we will lose all appreciation for the world and the things it has to offer. It is only through photography and the taking of photographs that this world will be preserved and we will retain what has already been lost.