Plato’s Cave and Photography

Matthew Myrick
2 min readFeb 16, 2021

--

“Entrence to cave” by Michelle on flickr
Sydney Stras on flickr
“Camera” by freakinayee on flickr
davidgoolsby21 on flickr
liu tao on flickr

Plato’s cave is an allegory where three prisoners are trapped in a cave since birth and have never seen the outside. They are taught the world is a particular way. One prisoner will then escape or will be taken out of the cave and shown the world. The prisoner would then return to the others and tell them what they saw. The other prisoner will not believe him not wanting what they believe in to be shown as false. We actually see this theory practiced every day. We are taught like the prisoners in a similar way only it’s through photographs. To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed. This means putting yourself in a specific relation to the world which feels like knowledge which is also power. With photographs we can record the world around us in an instant, but with the ability to record comes at the cost of intervening with a situation.

A photograph is a slice of time and space showing an event that has happened at that moment. However, photography implies that we know about the world as the camera records it, but this is the opposite of understanding. Understanding starts from not accepting the world as it looks. We don’t instantly understand everything by looking at a photograph. The knowledge gained by looking at a photograph will always be some kind of sentimentalism no mater what the subject of the image stands for.

--

--