“To collect photographs is to collect the world”
The world is the cave and we are the viewers. What we see is what is. What we know is what we’re told. That can in many situations be the truth, but it can also be altered and adjusted to fit someone else’s ideals and morals, fed back to us, the viewers, and taught to us as it is. In the modern age, with the internet and easy-to-access technologies, we are presented with far more information than anyone before us. We have access to pretty much everything we could want, more than that average person would likely have known merely 50 years ago. What started as information in the form of images, drawings and writing, became books and libraries. Bring in the internet and we have libraries upon libraries of information in our pockets; literary and visual.
Linking to Plato’s cave, viewers will believe what they are shown if they have nothing to compare the information. In the cave, the people are sat facing the wall where images are projected in the form of shadows, created by torch-light. The images are projected by people externally, such as shadow images or people walking past. As the viewers know nothing more than what they see projected on the wall, they know no better. In comparison to modern day, to have a single perspective or view on something or a subject is highly unlikely, due to internet access. However, due to the number of users, opinions and perspectives can cultivate themselves into truths, splitting the population to believe multiple things at once on a single topic. Furthermore, with the integration of editing software, photographic and other visual media based information can be altered to fit the image of the creator, passing around an altered image to the viewers of what they want the reality to appear as.
Below I have linked a YouTube video that discusses the idea that reality is a simulation; that what we see is created for us and how we experience it may be down to some level of creation and external control.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4rCzA8fS84
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