Reflection Of Plato's The Allegory Of The Cave

While the universal cliche in regards to looking at a photograph is “a picture tells a thousand words,” the questions we should truly be asking to ascertain what those words really mean are what is the context of the messages being asserted, and whether or not the language behind these “thousand” words is the same for all of us. In simpler terms, what I am trying to say is not all images are interpreted alike. Whether it’s from looking at a photograph at an art gallery, the news, or on our phones, there a certain elements we can identify. However, from the individual perspective of photographs, we interpret the meaning behind it differently. At the age of two and a half years, my family emigrated from Palestine to America in order

To find the root of this uncertainty, we can look to Sontag’s reflection of Plato’s “the allegory of the cave.” In summary, “The allegory of the cave” is about prisoners chained inside of a cave, with no idea of what the outside is like, being given names for the shadows of objects they’ve seen. When the prisoners are freed from their chains, the world they find is not as easily understood, and those years of isolation result in an incomprehensible reality, something analogous to experiencing the relationship between photographs and the reality which they attempt to portray.. In actuality, there is no direct answer as to whether or not there are different types of knowledge or degrees of it. In regards to the the degrees of knowledge, elements could be displayed as“indisputable evidence that the trip was made, that the program was carried out, that fun we had” (Sontag, 9). This means the degrees of knowledge from a photograph are the viewers recollecting the various senses of the photographer; perhaps putting themselves in his shoes and comprehending through a progression of photographic images the experiences of