Throughout history reality has been related through images and philosophers such as Plato have made efforts to diminish our reliance on representations by pointing at a direct ways to grasp the real. Susan Sontag quotes Feuerbach in saying that our age prefers the photograph to the real thing, the appearance before experience. This argument, Sontag says, is widely accepted in modern culture which is constantly engaged with producing and consuming images to such a degree that photography has been made essential for the health of the economy and the stability of social structures.
Photography, according to Susan Sontag, holds an almost unlimited authority in modern society. Such photographic images are capable of replacing reality by virtue of being not only a mirror or interpretation of in, but also a relic of reality, something that is taken straight from it.
Photography, unlike painting, does not only address and represent its object and does not only resemble it; it is also a part of the object, its direct extension.