Susan Sonntag, On photography

Our
very sense of situation is now articulated by the
camera’s interventions.

This, in turn, makes it easy to feel that any
event, once underway, and whatever its moral
character, should be allowed to complete itself-
so that something else can be brought into the
world, the photograph. After the event has ended,
the picture will still exist, conferring on the event
a kind of immortality (and importance) it would
never otherwise have enjoyed.