Amusing Ourselves To Death Analysis

A product of reality for just a moment

Many people believe that photographs are used to capture memories and moment of time and emotions present at the time it was taken. However, a photograph does more than capture memories and moment of time, it is also a tool of art that facilitate a form of communication through the expression of our thoughts and ideas. It is an important resource that immortalizes historical figures and moment as well as helps us to regain mobility on our “conscious thoughts and awake desire” ( Sontag, pg.17). A photograph helps us shape our reality by exposing us to the difference experiences from our counterparts on the side of the world. It educates and enriches our perspectives of the world and help us shape

A photograph would also be considered as a business that only promotes self-entertainment and finance exposure. Journalists nowadays use pictures as a way to appeal and captivate those readers. As time goes by, by constantly showing pictures of atrocity without any sorts of emotions or any sort of connections, the photograph becomes a “stream of under selected images, each of which cancels its processor” ( Sontag, pg. 18). Photography becomes a business where we expose and sell pieces of someone’s life without having any sorts of compassion or sincerity. Nora Ephron even stated: Any editor who decided to print those pictures without giving at least a moment’s thought to what purpose they served and what their effect was likely to be on the reader should ask another question: have I become so preoccupied with manufacturing a product”(pg.3). We even as the consumer and admirer of photographs become connected, sentimental and lastly immune with those pictures because it becomes daily activities that we are constantly seeing without having to feel any sort of attachment to it. We become “child’s game of peek-a-boo, endlessly entertaining” ( Postman, pg.77) where we are no longer interested or aware of what those photographs mean. Instead, we are constantly being manipulated into believing that entertainment is an important factor to our society. We have to laugh, cry, and scream without having to feel any sort of attachment with those photographs. Helen even stated that “photography removes us from an event, stops us from truly experiencing it, and thereby turns the photographs into “shadows of one another” ( Collect the