On Photography by Susan Sontag is a narrative on the evoultuion of photography. She makes the point that a new visual code exist because "photographs alter and enlarge our notions of what is worth looking at and what we have the right to observe. They are a grammar and, even more importantly, an ethics of seeing. Finally the most grandiose result of the photographic enterprise is to give us the sense that we can hold the world in our heads-as an anthology of images". She asserts that this has changed the viewer in three ways. First, modern photography in concert with advances in technology has created an overabundance of pictures or visual material. I agree with this point. I would go so far as to say that the overabundance of visual images is partly responsible for the decline in the use of the written and spoken word to describe events. It seems that everyone is fixated on the visual record that photographs provide instead of the use of verbage.
Another change that she alludes to is the effect of modern photography on our education. She claims that "photographs now provide most of the knowledge people have about the look of the past and the reach of the present". She believes and so do I that photography teaches us about things and parts of the world that our out of our immediate realm. It is my opinion that photography facilitates the gathering of knowledge by crystallizing an image or images. As an avid viewer of "American Experience", a documentary program that airs on PBS, I can say without hesitation that the visual images more times than not capture the context and essence of the subject much more effectively than the written or spoken word.
Her final claim is that photography desenstizes its audience. On this point I also agree. It seems as I gotten older, there is no more "shock value" when I view a photograph. I dare to say that I doubt that I will ever be shocked by a photograph of any kind again. As a child when I saw images of the Nazi concentration camps, I was horrified. Now when I see those images, I can't detect any emotion in myself. Images of any kind whether humorous or horrifying have no effect anymore. Photographs to some extent have taken the emotion out of living. It is almost impossible for a person to see an image that they have not already been exposed to. How boring!