Chapter 7 - The Social Photograph

I feel like Ritchin does a really great job of picking opening quotations that really make you think. Chapter 7 is no exception with a quote that flips the question of photography being a form of art on it’s head by instead asking if it has not changed art’s entire form. I thought that the argument Ritchin then introduces was an interesting one. On one side, you have photos being taken of people to preserve their memory and make their experience well known. On the other side you have the invasion of privacy, and the fact that not everyone wants to be photographed, especially when information has become so accessible with new technologies such as the internet. The second part of the argument made me remember how some tribes thought of being photographed as their soul being stolen from their bodies. Though Ritchin goes on to talk about how information can be expressed through photography, you do have to wonder when it becomes too much. Perhaps with an excess, we are actually limiting ourselves, or limiting photography as an art form as it becomes more about the information it holds.