There is something predatory in the act of taking pictures. To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them they can never have*; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed. Camera is a sublimation of the gun, to photograph someone is a sublimated murder-- a soft murder, appropriate to a sad, frightened time.
On Photography, Susan Sontag
* I guess we always have this knowledge. It's a violation when we document it and make it possible to let them know we have this knowledge.
