Susan Sontag,"In Plato's Cave" from the book: On Photography

Susan Sontag,"In Plato's Cave" from the book: On Photography

In recent decades, photography has become an important part of everyday life and we as a society rely on photography to chronicle our daily lives and important events. Sontag states that photography has take on the qualities of a mass art, meaning that it was no longer looked upon and practiced as art, but instead a way for us to package and frame our lives for others to view as a pretend presentation of ourselves.Sontag believes that we manipulate reality and begin to idolize photographic images, living through them. 
I was interested in reading this chapter from Sontag's book, On Photography because i think that this relates to my territories of practice because it examines the relationship our society has with photography and how it borders on obsessional.

Sontag comments on the use of photography in tourism as she explains that photographical evidence validates the holiday or how much fun you had whilst also becoming a souvenir or "converting the experience into a image". We dont feel like we are truly present unless we take a photograph. 

Most importantly, Sontag examines society's need to document through photography because of our need as humans to assert our existence. We want to take pictures of notable moments in our lives, and remind ourselves that we have had certain experiences to look back on when were older thus the photographic image becomes a confirmation of our existence "Needing to have a reality confirmed and experiences enhanced by photographists is an aesthetic consumerism to which everyone is now addicted".

After reading and analyzing this extract from On Photography i feel that this relates to my work and territories of practice as it examines the human obsession of repetitively recording/documenting our lives through the lense. I also feel that it relates in the sense that we all are obsessed with approving and confirming reality through photography and my territories of practice is personalized universes which relates as we are trying to create our own personal universe through photography. I have never made works that are photographical based and my use of photography is generally to capture my work in different stages and at completion. This makes me think that maybe i should experiment with photography as an art in itself and focus on making the moment i have captured the art instead of the other way round. I also find that after reading this essay, i have begun to look at my work in a different light, as i believe that my work is permanent and will endure the test of time, but if decide to work in nature, using nature, as i planned to do then my work would become ephemeral and therefore taking a photograph of my work would become the most important aspect of my practice as this would be the only form of documentation or my work existing after it had disintegrated.