Photography: Truth or Lies?

I'll admit that I didn't think much of photography the first time I read Susan Sontag's In Plato's Cave. It took for me to go back and really read the text to understand what Sontag was fully trying to say. To a certain extent I do agree with her opinions about photography, but to another degree I have my own opinions about the subject. Well first off, I do believe it is hard to find truths from just a photo and I didn’t understand what this meant until I deeply analyzed the argument. In a sense we are blinded to what’s behind the meaning of a photo just like the metaphor of Plato’s Cave. We automatically assume that because a photo is a photo (an actual event captured on camera), that what we see is real. A photograph isn’t like a painting, a sculptor, or even a written piece where the artist/author gives us their own interpretation of an event. It’s hard for us as viewers’ to find these things credible because we think of them as someone else’s point of view. But when it comes to finding credibility within a photograph it’s easy for us to trust that what we see is real. We assume a photo is reality when in fact it isn’t. A photo is no different because it is still someone else’s, in this case the photographers, interpretation of reality/life. Without knowing the full background and the context of what is being photographed, there is no real way for us to tell if what we’re seeing in the photo is a truth or just a portrayal of truth. I disagree with Sontag’s opinion that everything that someone takes a picture isn’t reality. I think it just depends on the person taking the picture. There are some photographers who don’t try to portray anything when they take a photo. They simply just capture life as it is. I think it also depends on what’s truth to the photographer. You can’t just tell someone that what they took a picture of wasn’t real. If they were there and they witnessed the event happening first-hand, then it is reality. It may not be a reality too us, but it is too the photographer. It doesn’t really matter what the audience thinks just like with an artist’s artwork. The viewer/listener is entitled to interpret the artwork any way they want to (and that doesn’t mean that their interpretation is necessarily right or wrong), but too the artist no matter what the audience thinks, what they’ve created is real. It’s their reality and their truth not the audiences. I think this says that reality isn’t just this broad idea about what is life. Every being has their own individual reality because we’re all different people with our own thoughts about what’s real and what’s fake. Despite the fact that there are great possibilities that what we see in photos isn’t real, I think people still take photos for enjoyment. Also, people like to feel a part of their environments and what’s going on around them. And once time passes there’s no way to ever get it back. The easiest most reliable way we can control passing time and hold on to memories is to take a picture. So no matter what Sontag says about how photo’s don’t display actual truth and we’re all confined in Plato’s Cave due to the limitations that photos have on our truths, I don’t think people really care. In our society nobody thinks that deeply into the truth behind a photo. Taking photos/photography has played such a huge role in our modern society that it’s become engrained in our culture. And with that being said, I strongly believe photography is here to stay.