"In Plato's Cave" by Susan Sontag

Sontag, Susan. "In Plato's Cave." On Photography. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977. 3-24. Print.

In  Susan Sontags essay “In Plato’s Cave” from her books “On Photography” Sontag argues that even though Plato’s philosophy exist over 1000 years ago that society as a whole is still in fact in Plato’s cave. Sontag comes on to strengthen her agreement by talking about how photography in a form of imprisonment that creates an “ethic of vision” and by making the mind feel like we can be harness the world within our own head. A photo is Sontag is merely I one sided view based off how the photographer has previewed it and how they want to communicate it. It is a way of being in an event but not really even being there. When we see a picture we can envision ourselves there, but never have actually step foot outside our door. Sontag goes on to compare photography with rape because in photography we see people in a manner unavailable to themselves and we gain knowledge of them which can never be theirs, and thus photography reifies people into objects which can be subjected to symbolic ownership. I will attempt to use this in my research paper by showing how this technology has shaped the human might compared to the other technologies such as Facebook, television and other communication mediums have. Pictures have changed the way people see and imagine life events.