This chapter discusses images and visuals and how they truly represent reality and the world that we live in and also how they define us. The argument that is being debated is that whether or not photographs truly capture the "truth" of an event or is it used to persuade ourselves and others into seeing and believing what we actually want our lives to look like when in reality our lives are not that wonderful and exciting.
Photographs can be interpretated in a variety of ways. In one of the photographs in the chapter, an elderly woman is standing in front of a local church praying. One might interpret this image as an innocent woman praying to her almighty Creator. After reading the text, the person will realize it is rather the opposite that it is a devastating image of the horrific earthquake that took place in Haiti on January 12, 2010, resulting in 230,000 lost lives. This particular image exhibits the pathos effect; it appeals the emotion as well as sympathy of the viewer. Another picture shows a large group of people piled in a dumpster. This image suggests that because they are in a dumpster, these people are homeless and are in need of a place to stay. These photographs, along with others, can be interpretated in so many ways and give us a metaphorical snapshot of the world that we live in.
The section in the chapter, "Snapshots of the Ordinary", focuses on the simple, ordinary snapshots taken by normal, everyday people. The first photograph shows how cameras and technology today can not only capture ordinary images, but also the extraordinary. The images displays three cameras being held in front of a boy's face, each one showing each one of his eyes and his mouth. Each camera is of a different digital media : a digital camera, a Blackberry cellphone, and an iPhone. This particular shows how technology today can capture normal features and distort them in different ways that reality could not, and that is basically the idea of a photograph. It is designed to distort and configure an instantaneous moment in life in a way to imply what we, as humans, want our life to appear to others-and do it in less than one fourth of a second. It is amazing what pictures can imply and how they can be interpreted. One might look at a collection of home videos of a family who, according the different videos, appear to be a perfect happy family with their children laughing, dancing, and being cute on camera. But, we know that is far from reality, and those moments are not always captured on film. Of course, precious moments like those are where we bring out the video camera because it is those moments that we want to take away from our negative culture,and they make us feel good. We want to create the illusion, or myth, of that perfect family that everyone loves and adores. As happy and content as those moments make us feel, they can be a disservice to our memory. Unfortuntely, those moments of our family where they are living their everyday lives can be hard to recall and tend to be forgotten, and that is the lfie that we actually lived. As we continue to gain those "Kodak" moments of life, we also lose the true story of our lives.
In the article featuring Patrick Cox's "Amerca 24/7", the author goes around the country capturing digital images and photographs of everyday Americans at their various professions. He mentions that our family albums are our most prized possessions, and after doing a survey with a local fire department chief about residential fires, he concluded that the three items people attempt to recover from the fire are their family members, their pets, and their photo albums. We treasure these photos because as we get older and with so much going on in the world, we tend to forget the great memories in life and the people that we shared them with. These photos, in a way, capture our true essence of who we really are and define our true character.
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