Maria Popova: What makes this insight particularly prescient is that Sontag arrived at it more than three decades before the age of the social media photostream — the ultimate attempt to control, frame, and package our lives — our idealized lives — for presentation to others, and even to ourselves. The aggression Sontag sees in this purposeful manipulation of reality through the idealized photographic image applies even more poignantly to the aggressive self-framing we practice as we portray ourselves pictorially on Facebook, Instagram, and the like

Ciel Hernandez: Sontag has noticed the growing need of people to have reality affirmed by photographs. The photograph is no longer just a souvenir, but an item which confirms that a certain human experience has actualized.