The subject: the human agent, that which acts, that which imposes form onto matter. Landscape photography cuts space to make a view. We humans make objects come to life.

The object: a passive creation, a thing which is made, encountered, possessed. Things that modify us, for example “We are what we eat”.

Representations of the human body have become a central part of photographic practice and consequent critical discussion since the 1980s. Furthermore, the things we have in our homes represent who we are. They define us, even what we wear or what we buy. We have a choice to buy certain things such as an old statue or figure which shows we like the histrory of that object.

Elizabeth Grosz, from the chapter ‘The Thing’:

“The thing is what we make of the world rather than simply what we find in the world… The thing is an outlined imposition we make on specific regions of the world so that these regions become comprehensible and facilitate our purposes and projects…”

“The thing is the compromise between the world as it is in its teeming and interminable multiplicity … and the world as we need it to be or would like it to be: open, amenable to intention and purpose, flexible, pliable, manipulable, passive”

– from Architecture from the Outside: Essays on Virtual and Real Space, MIT 2001, reprinted in The Object Reader

She talks about how the world is opened to us, its meaningful and there is purpose in this world. The world is a thing we can use to develop. The thing is different to a subject or an object. She talks about the compromise between what the world is, the rocks and all the water and the world that we need it to be. Subjects turn the immeasureable continuity of the world into things (that can be held, used, lived in) or subjects turn the immeasureable continuity of the world into things (that can be held, used, lived in).

A subject (wearing clearly defined objects)
contemplates a spreading ill-defined thing…

Eli Lotar, Abattoirs de la Villette, 1929

Hes wearing a suit, a bag, shoes and there is an object on the floor that looks troubling, it looks confusing, looks fleshy and it doesnt really have a representation.

Viviane Sassen:

The subject and object are being played with.

In conclusion Objects and subjects vary and are differnt from one another, Objects now can be turned into subjects such as bodies and subjects into objects such as a tree. Before when photography was not developed so much, people wanted a remenissence of a loved one as memory to hold onto so when passed they always have a piece of them to remember by. Nowadays it’s mainly used in the advertising scene of luxury Brands such as Prada, Dior, or MIchael Kors and many more to promote their items such as accessories like handbags or clothes such as jackets.