Like every mass art form, photography is not practised by many people as an art. It is mainly a social rite, a defense against anxiety, and a tool of power. Memorializing the achievements of individuals considered as members of families (as well as other groups)… Through photographs each family constructs a portrait chronicle of itself—a portable kit of images that bears witness to its connectedness… 

As photographs give people an imaginary possession of a past that is unreal, they also help people take possession of spaces in which they are insecure. Thus photography develops in tandem with one of the most characteristic of modern activities: tourism… It seems positively unnatural to travel for pleasure without taking a camera along. Photographs will offer indisputable evidence that the trip was made, that the program was carried out, that fun was had… 

Photography has become one of the principal devices for experiencing something, for giving the appearance of participation… While the others are passive, clearly armed spectators, having a camera has transformed one person into something active, a voyeur: only they have mastered the situation. What do these people see? We don’t know. And it doesn’t matter. It is an Event: something worth seeing—and therefore worth photographing.

Excerpt from Susan Sontag, On Photography, 1977.

We have different ideas about things. Specifically we have different ideas about what a person is, or should be. I often worry that my idea of personhood is nostalgic, irrational, inaccurate. Perhaps Generation Facebook have built their virtual mansions in good faith, in order to house the People 2.0 they genuinely are, and if I feel uncomfortable within them it is because I am stuck at Person 1.0. Then again, the more time I spend with the tail end of Generation Facebook the more convinced I become that some of the software currently shaping their generation is unworthy of them. They are more interesting than it is. They deserve better…

If the aim is to be liked by more and more people, whatever is unusual about a person gets flattened out. One nation under a format. To ourselves, we are special people, documented in wonderful photos.

Excerpt from Zadie Smith, Generation Why?, 2010.