The Power Of A Photograph!

The Power Of A Photograph!

'Photographs get the essence of things. They have the power to evoke, inform and inspire.'

(Ingledew, John,. 2005, 'Photography').

A single photograph is an extremely powerful and reminisce element, holding a sense of history and time within those pixels of the image. Photography is a wonderful thing, it allows this memories and events in history to be captured; events that we may not have even be alive for but are able to reflect upon through the power of photography.

Referring back to Ingledew’s reading, he states that, ‘Photographs bear witness to events for us; they inform and educate us through their eyes. The camera preserves things that are now in the past, allowing us to see that otherwise would be unseeable.’ (Ingledew, John,. 2005, 'Photography')

And this is why photography and photographs themselves are so powerful in their own right, they allow us to look back upon a time already lived and experienced, a time that we can only remember and visualise within our own minds. It allows a moment in time or a memory to be relived to an extent, just for a few seconds. Arguably, as Ingledew states, ‘We live our lives through photographs.’ (Ingledew, John,. 2005, 'Photography'). Which to an extent is true – we live in a time where technology is at its higher, which the majority if mobile phones and tablets have a camera on them, allowing us to capture these moments and memories within seconds, anywhere we go.

From this image, it presents someone looking back at old photographs, looking back at their memories for maybe even years or decades ago. It also presents this stage of development in photography and publishing photographs themselves as here the images are in black and white, insisting these images are taken from many decades ago as nowadays photographs are captured in colour and are edited to black and white if needed. 

The particular image above shows both, the old represented through the black and white photograph stored in this memory box, but the new essence through the smartphone taking an photograph on that device. Again, it shows this power of a photograph as it presents these memories but also reflects this period of time whereby photography has expanded onto an everyday tool of the phone.