Response #4 to Ways of Seeing

This video definitely had me think about how images affect the world, and beyond that, how photography changed the world entirely.

Like, John Berger explains in the videos, oil painting used to be in the place of color photography, but it functioned differently. Paintings depicted reality, but photographs create a virtual reality. Even if paintings did create a virtual reality, it'd most likely be abstract. Paintings are only owned by the rich and seen in museums. Photographs are owned by everyone and seen everywhere. We consume images everyday. This kind of accessibility to images changed our ways of living, not just seeing. Without visiting the Pyramids, you exactly know what they look like. Without being rich, you can imagine carrying a Louis Vuitton hand bag. The whole perspective of how we live is completely change with photography.

Today, it has taken even further with use of internet and social media. Images are produced and consumed more than ever, the new reality is becoming bigger and bigger. We are, in a way, more knowledgeable, because we are educated by endless amount of images, but at the same time, we are not at all knowledgeable, because we are ONLY learning through this virtual reality, not actual. I am not sure how we interact with the world will change in ten, twenty years, but it is true that photographs have changed the world pretty suddenly, and they are still changing it.