The Ontology of the Photographic Image-Ellie Monobe

I found this writing somewhat interesting in the beginning; I thought that the mention of Eygiptian processes of preserving the body was an interesting lead into photography. It was interesting to read about Bazin making the connection between how humans like to keep images of people who have past and the preservation of people through mummification.
One quote that really caught my eye during this reading was that “perspective was the original sin of Western painting”. This quote makes the “perspective” that was found in western painting as some holy gift that was born. Later on in the passage it then recognizes photography as freeing the plastic arts from likeliness and it was Niepce and Lumiere that unleashed perspective from sin and applied it to photography. Unlike painting, photography satisfied the realist ideas and showed us reality and life experiences. Painting, in this text, was viewed as something far more superior but yet too much like all the other art forms in the world. I got the feeling that to some people who appreciated changed enjoyed photography and saw it as some kind of release. He made it seem that it was impossible to ever create an image without the interference o f humans until photography was discovered and then there was no use for man besides hitting the button and developing the picture.
Lastly, another quote that I really felt like I grasped the concept of the superiority photography developed over painting was that “for photography does not create eternity, as art does, it embalms time, rescuing it simply from its proper corruption”. The plastic arts can create this aura that can pull you and can make you ponder about the era and generation it was created in. No one can look at a paingint for only a second and know exactly what place, time and what events were occurring at the moment the art was being formed because it takes a lot longer to produce than just a snapshot. Photography can capture a moment in time and have it there in your hands to view forever, when before if the picture wasn’t taken it could’ve been gone in an instant, or corrupted as Bazin would say.