i'm wondering about the sense of unfamiliarity a photo can impart.


as part of social studies in secondary school, students are faced with a series of source-based questions. a common question is: "how reliable is Source B?"

thanks to a stint as my brother's personal tutor, I know roughly how to tackle most of these questions. If Source B were a photograph, the standard answer would be something like this: "Source B is reliable to some extent, because it is a photograph and reflects what had actually taken place. However, to the extent that this photograph does not represent the complete picture, it may be biased and thus should be cross-verified with another source/background knowledge."

yet that sense of unfamiliarity upon seeing that particular photo has gotten me wondering about the validity of the first part of the answer...

do photos really represent reality?



or, perhaps they do, and what is non-reality is really that virtual image imprinted in my mind - that image that is fortified, enhanced, anchored by so much more emotion that the entire nature of the image changes. so that when I see a photograph - a cold, hard, image, that has nothing to do with my memories - i feel this wave of unfamiliarity and even incredulity. i want to protest that my reality has nothing to do with that reality i see...and that, of course, my reality is the real reality.