Response to Camera Lucinda Excerpt

This excerpt shook my perspective of photography and that yearning to capture the essence of something that no longer exists, which I could relate to directly with my mother also being dead, yet still seeing her mannerisms in her sisters, or a stranger, and finding parts of her although she no longer exists. However, I have not tried to capture those particles of memory in new photographs, because I would feel the same rejection and conundrum of someone or something that could completely resonate as her, without it being her at all. 

"...a photograph is laborious only when it fakes." This quote resonated with me in the relation of what is now photoshop, green screen and other technological ways of digitally altering reality or tricking the eye. It is a beautiful thing, but I agree that the photograph is also violent. Not to dwell on my mother's passing, but I recall before the casket was shut, my stepdad's uncle had a disposable camera and flashed an incredibly invasive photograph of my mother before the casket was closed. I have never seen that photograph, but knowing it exists is incredibly daunting when I think about it. This is one instance of how the force that a photograph possesses can be so powerful. 

As a photojournalist, it is my job to do the easiest utilization of photography: simply document a "copy of reality," but as a fine art photographer, I often do the opposite or at least become quite deceptive with my own "tricks." It is interesting to think that I could go to a thrift store, buy only 70s styled clothes, style someone in such standing next to a 70s car, add some fake lens flare or something resembling a light-leak, and there it would be: a fake photograph emulating a part of history that I have never existed in. To someone who knows little about photography, I could easily deceive one into thinking that photograph was of someone in the 70s, just by the art of deception that photograph so dangerously allows. 

Juxtaposing the trickery, I agree that photography also "puts an end to the resistance" of history, aside from the mythological romanticism many choose to accept. There is no denying of the crying, naked Napalm girl running away from bombs in the Vietnam War that Nick Ut photographed and won a Pulitzer Prize for. There is no denying of the many tear jerking images that can easily be found on Facebook of another animal rescue depicting their discovery of mangy fur and the obvious neglect of another animal due to a lousy owner. Photographs are also used in court cases as evidence, in some jury trials, and as other forms of reliability. The expansive utilitization of photographs only continues to grow in this digital age, but it is not always for the better, sometimes trickery or manipulation of a photograph makes it just as dangerous.