What Photography means to me


After reading “Photography Changes everything.” By Marvin Heiferman I realized how many uses and meanings photography has. Cameras are everywhere, to the point that we don’t even realize how plentiful they are. What’s more, they’re used thousands of times a day, sometimes for things most people wouldn’t even consider as photography.  From taking a picture of your dinner to post on Instagram, snapping a photo at a family reunion all the way to scientists capturing pictures of atoms and doctors taking x-rays, photography is used in many field and ways in life.  Each of those kinds of photographs have a different meaning.

Photography has a different meaning in the way it’s used, but to me it ultimately means capturing the world around us. Through photography we preserve things about nature or our world.  Every kind of photography no matter what type has that in common. It shows how our world is or was and how it works.  Look at photos from the 1800’s (when photography was first generally used) to photos today,  and you’ll see how photography has captured the world for centuries, showing changing times, styles, ideologies and landscapes. You can even see how the very technology itself has changed 

Even if we do it a in a creative way, the meaning stays the same because we’re still documenting something about our world simply by taking even a self portrait photograph. It stills shows us and reveals something about our personality which is shaped by our world. Furthermore, just the way we dress tells the viewer something about our world and society even if there’s no background to give them clues. Every photo taken shows something about our world, society, culture and beliefs, what’s important to us and what we think is meaningful, worthwhile or beautiful.  That’s why I say the real meaning of photography is capturing our world.

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