On Photography In Plato’s Cave(aka The Allegory of the cave or Plato’s Cave of Lies) Plot’s Cave Summary: The gist of it is that there are these CAVE DWELLERS (that would be us) and they are CHAINED by their ACCEPTANCE of INFORMATION GIVEN TO THEM ABOUT THINGS (the “truth” of facts. So facts are INTERPRETED for them and they accept those facts.) The FACTS are PROJECTED up on the wall as images. Flickering images cast onto the wall. And they see these images, TREES, GOAT, OCEAN, etc. and they believe that the IMAGE is THE REAL THING. But one dweller breaks free and says THIS CAN’T BE ALL THERE IS. The other DWELLERS fight HER because they are comfortable and don’t want to be tasked with breaking free and learning what is real. They try to KILL HER but she escapes. Then the PROJECTIONISTS come at her and try to kill her. And then she runs out of the cave and up the long slope out. MONSTERS come at her and she fights them off. She stumbles around in the growing light from the opening of the cave and they all mock and laugh at her. BUT SHE KEEPS GOING until SHE REACHES THE OUTSIDE. This is the CONSCIOUS or AWAKE WORLD. There, she sees A REAL TREE (not just a picture of a tree) and A REAL GOAT, and THE REAL OCEAN. WONDER OF WONDERS, she can stay in this REAL WORLD and see and smell and feel and experience all that is true and truly real forever and ever. OR she can RETURN to the CAVE to try and help the others. Plato said that if she returns she is a PHILOSOPHER KING. A MESSENGER of HOPE AND TRUTH. Like a BODDSATVA or a PROPHET or MESSIAH. But here’s the thing:If she returns, they will definitely kill her in the most brutal and violent and complete way. MESSIAHS ALWAYS DIE HORRIBLE DEATHS in MYTHS AND FOLKTALES. Always. Does she do it? Would you? Since 1839 everything has been photographed She’s saying that not only are we hanging out in, wallowing in, our ignorance, we kind of love it, we are the cave dwellers The cave is our world and to collect photographs is to collect the world When one paints a picture there is the element of INTERPRETATION in the art. Photographs don’t SEEM to have INTERPRETATIONS and so we just accept them at THE TRUTH Photographers alter and enlarge what is worth looking and what we have the right to observe Visual codes are grammar and ethics of seeing Photographic enterprise gives us the sense that we hold the world as an anthology of images Godard’s Les Carabiniers (1963)- Two peasants bring home pictures instead of loot Photographs really are experience captured, and the camera is the ideal arm of consciousness in its acquisitive mood. To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed. It means putting oneself into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge—and, therefore, like power. What she’s saying here is that a photograph acts as a way to hijack, steal, seize, poach something. Yes, even a moment in time. The definition of appropriate is “take (something) for
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