Collection

"A way of certifying experience, taking photographs is also a way of refusing it-by limiting experience to a search for the photogenic, by converting experience into an image, a souvenir" (Sontag, Susan).

"having camera has transformed one person into something active, a voyeur: only he has mastered the situation. What do these people see? We don't know. And it doesn''t matter. It is an Event: something worth seeing-and therefore worth photographing" (Sontag, Susan).

"Photography has become one of the principal devices for experiencing something, for giving an appearance of participation" (Sontag, Susan).

Sontag, Susan. On Photography. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977. Print.

I've been thinking about Susan' Sontag's essay on photography ever since we talked about it in my Contemporary Issues class.Having a photograph of your experience is your way of showing the world that you had that experience, legitimating it for yourself. Last semester during my final critique, we talked about how my smaller images indicated preciousness and importance. I feel as if this is another aspect that is coming into my work, the idea that I am collecting these images to show my experiences in these places. I think for my final critique and exhibit I will have frames for every image, in a way that will like showcasing the experience and then compartmentalizing it for later memories.