Certain types of photography offer the practitioner something more than the act of creating an aesthetic image. Reading Susan Sontag’s “On Photography”, it is interesting to note that she sees the act of photography as something possessive, sometimes distancing, the result aesthetic or instrumental. The view is particularly cynical at times where she paints a dystopia-like world where the camera is a controlling force on people. Apart from the alarming levels of surveillance that she considers and which have become very much a fact of life post 9/11, there is the mind numbing mundanity that the all pervasive camera-phone has created. There isn’t a single thing or object that is not photographed now. It tends to be done without thought apart from the simple purpose to record and disseminate. But the photography created by this snap-shot culture is all about the product or result of the camera, and very little critical thought goes into the action.
