On Photography

Studies in UCLA have indecated that up to 93% of communication effectiveness is determined by nonverbal cues. It sure makes me think, we need to listen with our eyes. And we have been doing so, otherwise we would not have known of our great ancestors who structured our path 6000 years ago. We would have no proof of who we are or where we came from or even where we are headed toward without seeing something that tells us the past of us. Photographs can't speak but they don't need to because what they withhold what cannot be denied; evidence. Susas Sontag mentions on, On Photographs "photographs passes for INCONTROVERTIBLE proof that a given thing happened"(5). We at least know or get an idea of what we are capable of doing by viewing and holding evidence in defense. Without this incredible and powerful tool as Sontag describes it to be, the world would be less valuable to and individual who does not know what exist on the other side of the world, or even just another city or state away from his or her residence. "Ver para creer." meaning, seeing is believing or see to believe plays an important role in human behavior. Pictures are like eyes that a target can never have. It exposes the naked truth. Sontag also says, "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 by symbolically possessed"(14). Advertising along with many other photos today are now degrading humans from subjects to objects. "Photographs cannot create a moral position, but they can reinforce one-and can help build a nascent one"(9). Sontag as to add to what the evidence left behind or in other words filling in the blanks to make sense of something incomplete. Yet this method can go beyond our imagination into the abuse category by degrading all value on any photograph. For example people who use pictures to sell them as ponography or to use them to fulfill our own selfish desires. In other cases photos serve humans as historical facts. To not just say. "hey I went to France" but to let the pictures that you took on France do the talking for you.