Am I normal? You asked Google. Here’s the answer | Eleanor Morgan
Every day millions of internet users ask Google life’s most difficult questions, big and small. Our writers answer some of the commonest queries
“The camera has the power to catch so-called normal people in such a way as to make them look extremely disturbed,” writes Susan Sontag in an essay from 1973 called Freak Show. “The camera chooses oddity, chases it, names it, elects it, frames it, develops it, titles it.” Sontag was talking about photography, but this concept of naming-and-framing is a useful analogy for how we view one another in society at large.
We muscle through life constantly framing the “normality” of others against our own patchwork of knowledge, life experiences, values and opinions. We can’t help it. Yet normality is probably the most subjective concept human beings can ponder.
If I were to walk down the street and take photos of anyone that
