In Plato's Cave

Susan Sontag makes a number of interesting claims about the role of the camera in modern society in her article “In Plato’s Cave.” One claim she makes is her comparison, that metaphorically, a camera now serves the same purpose as a gun. She even gives the example of a safari in which the camera has directly replaced the gun. Sontag explains how we use the camera to shoot subjects with a similar mindset: no so much to kill, as to preserve and to immortalize.

We take pictures and display them in our homes the same way a hunter displays the head of his kill -- almost as memorial to that thing, place, or moment in time. A more literal comparison between the two can be understood by remembering the remarkably similar terminology used during both the processes of hunting and taking pictures: load (ammunition or film), aim, and shoot.

The camera can also be compared to a gun in the way we use it to give us a certain kind of power over whatever we choose to point it at. (Similarly, I find it interesting the ways in which people react when they see a camera on them; often they try to move out of the shot or at least protect their face.) Additionally, the camera as a gun, gives us a level of protection from that which we are shooting by providing something to hide behind, separating us from whatever exists beyond our lens.