Photography as an Extension of the Ego

Photography as an Extension of the Ego

Donald B. Colson




INTRODUCTION




The capacity of the photograph to represent the
external world in infinite and inexhaustible detail without the shifts,
distortions or forgetting to which memory is vulnerable has made
photography an avocation of unequalled popularity. The camera aids
people to overcome and extend beyond the limits of perceptual and
thought processes while providing a non-verbal means of personal
expression, a vehicle for communicating subjective experience and
private perspectives of the world. It thereby makes such experiences
available for recognition, appraisal and external validation. For many
people the sheer pleasure derived from precision machinery is a
prominent source of satisfaction. The major theme of this paper is that
the understanding of photography and its popularity, in large measure,
is to be found in its exercise of certain ego capacities and the
extension of those capacities beyond their usual limits. The paper is
based on several sources of information:
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http://www.pep-web.org/document.php?id=irp.006.0273a