The Power and Impact of Photographs

In this episode Barry and Mike discuss Susan Sontag’s essay In Plato’s Cave from her book: On Photography.  In this essay Sontag argues that photographs are much like the images that the prisoners in Plato’s cave see reflected on the walls: representations of reality, but not reality itself.  Sontag argues that, like Plato’s prisoners, we too have difficulty distinguishing the image from the event that they represent.  Additionally, she claims that these images, though different than what they represent, still have the power to produce an emotional response from viewers. 

Barry and Mike bring Sontag’s arguments from 1977 to our current digital existences and investigate current experiences with images, noting that in many ways the differences between the real and the image, as well as the implications of our difficulties in distinguishing between the two haven’t changed all that much in the last 45 years.  They focus on Sontag’s claims about nostalgia and negative empathy as being products of our interactions with photography and try to figure out what that means in our current situation.