After reading and discussing the readings assigned this week I now realize that photography is more than just snapping a picture. I never thought of photography in the light that these historical art figures have challenged us to think about when viewing photography. It is in a sense very philosophical when you think about the concepts that they are asking us to grasp when breaking down a photo.

In Baudelaire on Photography we are presented with what we described as a "rant" as to why photography is not an art. Baudelaire saw photographers as "too ill-endowed or too lazy" of individuals to even be considered artists. He even went as far as stating that if "photography is allowed to supplement art in some of its functions, it will soon have supplanted or corrupted it altogether, thanks to the stupidity of the multitude which is its natural ally." The fact that in a sense that anybody can snap a picture and consider it art made Baudelaire not only furious but worried for the sake of his view on art.

In Susan Sontag's "In Plato's Cave" presented us with her own concerns about photography. She seemed to be more worried about what photography can do to society. She takes a powerful stance and states that photographs prevent the photographer from engaging in the activities they are photographing. This made sense to me especially in the case of vacation and tourism because we indulge into capturing these experiences in photos that we waste time enjoying the experience our ourselves. Instead, of taking the photographs and using them for reflections of our experience, we should use our stories and memories of actually participating in activities the area has to offer to recall the fun of the experience. Sontag also feels that photographers have too much control over what the viewer sees because in reality they depict what the viewer is presented with. This claim can be made for many other things in my opinion, from books, to music, and to other art forms because at the end of the day the artists decides what they want to convey to their audience.

In Barthes piece "Cameral Lucida: Reflections on photography" the attention is brought more to the meaning of photographs. Barthes uses this piece to describe his relationship with his mother while still getting across his point that photos have different meanings for different people. With any given picture there can be several different interpretations just based on the the individual and what their personal experience. For example, if you showed a photo of World War II to a war veteran their prospective of the photo would be a lot different and more personal than anyone who didn't share these experiences. He also presented the reader with the idea that photographs are actually alive. I couldn't quite grasp this concept but the fact that the claim was even made was interesting to me.