Campany Responce

The relationship between photography and people that is happening in our society is very intersting and Campany's essay touches on many of them.  Overall, the access to photographic images has exploded over the past few years.  Almost everyone has a camera and even more so most everyone has a camera phone which makes it easy to snap a picture and upload it to a social media site to be sent out for the world to see.  In addition to the barrage of still images the amount of video and stills from video has also dominated the news waves and practically that is all that is seen in prime time.  

The bombardment of images has been argued to have devalued photography.   I don't think that photography has been devalued it has just been taken for granted in some ways.  For news outlets the video and photographs shown are played over and over and there are constantly updated.  A personal photograph of a family member, however, is treasured.  Shoe boxes filled with photograph will never be devalued by their owner, and even after they pass someone will find meaning in them.  

In a sense I feel that the meaning that is found in family photos is what late photography is trying to do.  I feel that it is an image that tries to show a sense of stillness through its formal elements.  The images I feel memorialize an event and in the end are more influential than the images of the event.  It taps into the emptiness that we feel after a traumatic event.  The feeling of picking up the pieces when many have been destroyed beyond the point where it can be salvaged.  Although these images are powerful and the only seemingly still image that one can find in the wake of a disaster I feel that they almost glamorize it.  Not to make it seem happy, but they are often staged with a lack of human presence.  It makes me wonder how far is too far.  What can someone show to memorialize and capture the aftermath without changing its meaning entirely? Just a question that I wonder.  I personally do not know how to feel about late photography.  I question what the motive is.