Susan Sontag, in her classic On Photography, writes about the way in which photographs have a dual effect on the psyche: in one sense, such images make an experience real for someone who was not there; in another sense, though, photography provides a measure of distance to those actually in the moment. As Rye interprets Sontag's point, "she also said that those people who are experiencing a situation often say it feels like it's a representation. The people experiencing 9/11, for example, said they felt like they were in a dream, or in a film."