The Thing Itself Analysis

What is interesting is that he writes about how photography is a process of taking what we already see, it is based on selection not synthesis. We do not get to create what we want to see when taking photos of the world, is all about how we see it that makes a photo interesting, “the world itself is an artist of incomparable inventiveness,” (Szarkowski 3). So a photographer’s job is to see the art that the world has created and to capture it, to express what he has seen. This shows us that photography is a representation of the world. It reveals reality, which leads to his first perspective of photography, “The Thing Itself”. Szarkowski explains how photography does represent the world around us but reality is a different thing. When it comes to, for example, photojournalism, I believe some photographers try their best to portray reality. They want people to see what has happened, because the proof is more important. It is indeed an artistic problem, that what is in a photo is not the same as what our eyes see, but I think that this issue can be beneficial because it can be seen from a more artistic point of view as opposed to simply seeing what is just there. Photography does not necessarily lie, it all depends on what the photographer is trying to show, whether it is from an artistic point of view or through a journalistic point of view. It all …show more content…
But Szarkowski explains that one cannot “pose the truth…only record it as he found it…in a fragmented and unexplained form- not a story.” (Szarkowski 3). Photographs are only details, they can be symbolic, but only fragments of a greater narrative. I had always viewed photographs as stories, but now I can understand them as pieces of something much greater, which is a more interesting way of viewing photography. It allows for much more imagination and appreciation of a small detail in a