Sontag-essay

Sontag suggests that a photographer can place his/her power into any photograph.  Alfred Eisenstaedt's photo of a mother and child in the destroyed land of Hiroshima after the bombing adds to the Sontag's point that photography is the interpretation of the artist and once the photo is displayed to an audience it gains a degree of power over them.

The choices a photographer makes influence the viewer's ideas because there is a limited frame he or she is forced to examine.  The selection of a subject, emphasized colors, expanse of the background, and angles combined with multiple other decisions give the photographer a power over what the audience will see.  Susan Sontag in her essay on photography argues how photos have the ability to give power to the artist capturing the moment.  Being able to stop time by capturing the action and producing it as a tangible item gives the photographer the authority to witness a subject the way that no one else, including the subject, is able to.  Alfred Eisenstaedt exercises his power in his famous photography of celebrities, landscapes, and other life events.  He photographed a mother and her child sitting together in the depleted landscape of Hiroshima after all of the effects after the explosion of the atom bomb.  The way Eisenstaedt chose to photograph the two leaves the viewer to only the limited focus points of his work giving him power over his audience.