Holly Myrick-Final Theory Paper

I want to explore memory and the idea of a person. I saw someone on the elevator the other day that I had only seen before on Facebook. It was a very odd experience that really got me thinking about how we perceive people through a series of photographs and such before actually seeing them in person. What has culturally taught me to imagine a person in reality because of a split second frozen in time? These images feed our imaginations in ways that make up characters. We imagine how someone acts simply through a photograph. The photos seem extremely expressive because they were chosen to be on display for a reason. Why go to the trouble of wasting battery or film, looking through all of your photographs, having these specific images uploaded or printed, and have them sitting on the internet forever or framed and up for the world to see in a physical environment?

     This idea also made me ponder people we feel we no longer know. Photographs become obsessions because we have evidence of people we felt we knew at one point, and no longer feel that way. The obsession of memory and craving the idea of who someone was seems dangerous. It seems to be in the same sort of realm of categorizing people we’ve never met because of their photographs. Our minds make up personalities that more than likely won’t match up in the end. But why do we set ourselves up like that? These judgments seem dangerous and explore one of the more skeptical aspects of photography. Why can we not just see things as they truly exist? These photos may not prove a great deal of truth so why do we feel that photos are the best portrayal of others and ourselves? How much proof does a photo ID really show? We trust images so greatly these days; we rely on them to provide evidence for everything. I ate a cupcake today…don’t believe me? Go look on Instagram, it says I posted the photo three hours ago. But what if I took the photo three weeks ago and just want you to think I ate it today? Would you care that I lied about something so miniscule? The accessibility to photography and displaying them is insanely instantaneous, and our generation feels a desire to reveal every detail of our little lives through photographic means. My main goal is to explore how photography’s qualities of realism cause the mind to automatically assume characteristics because of their appearance in an image.