I've been thinking about a topic to writer over here, and occured me the following questioning : What's the role of pictures/photos for me, for us as a society? And if we lived in a world with no pictures ? How would it be to exist so? Here, I'll try to outline my perspective about the importance of pictures and photographs in our modern society.
Image source: pexels.com / Markus Spiske
We are surrounded by pictures, photos and all sorts of image contents, sometimes even without noticing that reality!
Images in a general sense (including photos, pictures and drawings) play a big role in our daily life, role that sometimes produces effects that we might not expect at all.
If you stop to think over, we can convey the most secret things without needing to say any word, by just using a simple image. Some people say that an image bring to light much more message(s) than a good text, produced by a great author, does.
Photographs, particularly, depict reality in a more accurate way than words do. In my view, photograph is the art of describing reality using natural light and good lens through a sensitive human watcher. Photograph is the reality by reality!
Photos allow our society communicate their values, and so drive social relationships according to their interests. We always need to communicate, since we're social beings, and so we make use of images to make ourselves understood and seen.
Especially in a context of a technologic society, where globalisation and Internet are the masters of our behaviour, photograph has worked for demonstrating what we are as individuals, that is, photos are shaping the way we buy, listen to music, wear fashion trends, get informed and ultimately enjoy living our life. The visual content is increasingly influencing diverse aspects of your and my social life in advertising and news.
A world without photos would definitely be a world without memory and learning. And not just learning in a sense that is related to academic knowledge. We can't forget that photos take part in our personal memories, recalling us what happened with humankind in the past, and consequently how we should act to prevent from making the same mistakes again. Just imagine as example historic photos that depict a dramatic period of human existence. All this kind of photos should be seen as "tools for learning from mistakes".
In a more personal sense, photos show our earthly life trajetory, where we came from, how we were, how we are and how we want to be, simply because they depict our inner essence in just a flash away. Probably, if you hadn't had the possibility to look at you on a photo, you wouldn't imagine what are your strong and weak points as person and then wouldn't put a lot of effort to make changes to improve yourself as well.
Lastly, we can conclude that even though photos can influence us with bad habits or behaviours, they really do play a vital role in society, sometimes raising people's awareness to do good, sometimes making us feel fantastic with sweet familiar memories or simply giving us further information about a specific topic. Let's celebrate that "spell" photos play over us. They are emotional and rational by nature!
Thanks to all of you reading so far,
Daniel
Comments
Hi, Daniel. This is the first time I say HI to you. Nice to meet you.
Your written English is so good that I read your article in one breath. I can’t agree with you more. Photography not only changed our life, but also influenced the progress of the traditional art history. Thanks to the invention of photography, artists were set free from the realistic “prison” and began to express themselves following their feelings and their own understanding of the visual world.
But I have to say, don’t you think sometimes…sometimes if your friends who travel with you or have dinner with you do not take photos too frequently, the rhythm and experience of the activity will be more fluent.
If making a sentence is a journey, then the experience of taking photos too frequently in the journey wi…ll……be……li..ke……t…h…..i………s.
Dear Daniel, photograph is another way/tool for us to learn more about our culture, norms, ideas , perception..etc. It was already proven that even in school, a person could easily get motivated by the things he has seen, esp. if the person is a visual intelligent.
However, people do have different acquisition from things he captured through that lenses, and we cannot deny the fact that this is very helpful.
Finally, capturing memories is one of the best gift technology could ever offer to us, even we cannot turn back time, we can still see old memories and still remember the feeling from the moment we caught that on cam.
Very nice blog!
Dear Daniel, Excellent writing!
Photography is one of my hobbies
I remember a saying 'photography is the only language that can be understood any where in the world'.
Thanks for sharing
Well Done!
It's definitely true that a photo is worth a thousand words. I couldn't imagine life without photos especially the great ones from family and friends with breath-taking backgrounds. They definitely leave an indelible mark in our lives. Most importantly, they're priceless!
Thank you for this writing. You've expressed your thoughts very well, Daniel! Now, you can share your best selfie ever. Just kidding!