I've never read anything by Susan Sontag, but encountered mentions of her book On Photography numerous times in various contexts. It's hailed as "one of the most highly regarded books of its kind". I like taking photographs myself, and thought I would find it interesting.Those seeking a well-constructed history of photography, its development and an introduction to various schools and movements of photography - as I did - are likely to be disappointed. On Photography has no central thesis, and is a collection of essays "about the meaning and career of photographs" as described by Sontag herself. This isn't a book on photography - it's a book on Susan Sontag.Although she writes about a wealth of photographers, Sontag doesn't explore any of them in depth - she moves from one to another very quickly, and often they are reduced to backgrounds for her own thoughts and opinions on photographs, which often include comparisons and references to other media. This can make for some very dense reading - I thought that the book suffered painfully from a lack of a central thesis.My biggest gripe with the book is that while by nature it has to be a polemic - it contains no bibliography or citations - Sontag constantly makes sweeping generalizations about both photography and photographers without offering any explanation. She presents her opinions as if they were facts, entirely without nuance, leaving no room for disagreement. To give her credit she has a multitude of opinions, and to praise or dismiss them all completely out of hand would be unfair, but many of her claims are very dubious: such as stating that tourists who enjoy taking snapshots of what they see do it because they know no other response, and for some it's the only way to appease their anxiety about not working (citation needed, unless we're going to stereotype whole nations). There are other claims that Sontag makes, which do real harm to all the otherwise good ideas she might have presented as they howl at us straight from loon territory. Although Sontag writes that the camera doesn't rape, or even possess, there is nonetheless an aggression implicit in every use of the camera, as it may presume, intrude, trespass, distort, exploit, and, at the farthest reach of metaphor, assassinate - all from a distance. And are you thinking dirty thoughts when you see a long-focus lens? Apparently you're not alone, and you're not even aware that you're doing it:The camera as phallus is, at most, a flimsy variant of the inescapable metaphor that everyone unselfconsciously employs. However hazy our awareness of this fantasy, it is named without subtlety whenever we talk about “loading” and “aiming” a camera, about “shooting” a film.(We all know that phalluses shoot, but how does one load a phallus?)Like guns and cars, cameras are fantasy-machines whose use is addictive. However, despite the extravagances of ordinary language and advertising, they are not lethal. In the hyperbole that markets cars like guns, there is at least this much truth: except in wartime, cars kill more people than guns do. The camera/gun does not kill, so the ominous metaphor seems to be all bluff—like a man’s fantasy of having a gun, knife, or tool between his legs.I don't know about others, but I never had a fantasy of having a gun or knife between my legs - I like what's there just fine the way it is! But it gets worse:Still, there is something predatory in the act of taking a picture. 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. Just as the camera is a sublimation of the gun, to photograph someone is a sublimated murder—a soft murder, appropriate to a sad, frightened time.Melodramatic writing like this strikes me as beyond silly; the idea that people might not only consent to be photographed but want to have their photograph taken and actively seek that opportunity is never considered. While it's a good paragraph from a literary perspective - cameras become guns, people are possessed by celluloid voodoo, and taking their photos is just a slightly better way of murdering them - it's the kind of writing that George Orwell famously described as being designed to "give an appearance of solidity to pure wind".All these essays have been written in the 1970's, long before the advent of both the internet and digital photography - which has transformed the medium completely, as it's now surrounding us completely, included in everything that we do. What would Susan Sontag say about people chuckling at funny cat pictures? I'm afraid the thought didn't even cross her mind. The malicious motives that Susan Sontag gives to all photographers have been largely replaced with people sharing the joy of taking photographs with others: people take photographs of themselves and share them with each other, connecting in ways which were previously impossible. I've read that Susan Sontag later turned back from some of the views that she held while writing On Photography - it's a shame this self-dissent was not included.
الجنس البشري يتلبث بشكل عنيد في كهف أفلاطون .. لا يزال يجد متعة بالغة في محض صور من الحقيقة .. عادته الدهرية.الاختراع الذي تم في 1839 منحنا الشعور بإمكانية إستيعاب العالم كله في أذهاننا .. كأنطولوجيا من الصور.عندما نصور ، فإننا نستولي على الشيء المصور .. هذا يعني نضع أنفسنا في علاقة معينة مع العالم تشبه المعرفة – و بالتالي السلطة.ثمة عدوانية كامنة في كل استخدام للكاميرا .. هناك وعد للتصوير الفوتوغرافي : دمقرطة كل التجارب من خلال ترجمتها إلى صور !التصوير الآن في الدرجة الأولى طقس إجتماعي ، و حصانة ضد القلق و أداة للقوة.تصوير الناس هو الاعتداء عليهم ، هو أن نراهم كما لم يروا أنفسهم أبداً ، أن تمتلك معرفة عنهم لا يمكنهم أن يمتلكوها أبداً .. المعاناة شيء ، الشيء الآخر هو العيش مع صور عن المعاناة ، التي لا تؤدي بالضرورة إلى نخس الضمير و التحريض على التعاطف ، بل يمكن أن تفسدهما أيضاً .. *مالارميه قال إن كل شيء يوجد كي ينتهي في كتاب .. اليوم كل شيء يوجد لينتهي في صورة فوتوغرافية*في الصورة تتساوي التمايزات بين الجمال و القبح ، الاهمية و التفاهه .. كل شيء يصبح صورة *مواجهة الكاميرا هو تعبير عن الرزانة ، و الصراحة ، و الكشف عن جوهر الموضوع .. لهذا فهي ملائمة للصور الطقوسية .. لكنها أقل جدارة في الصور المستخدمة على اللوحة التي تظهر المرشحين السياسيين ...الكتاب دراسة عميقة لفن الفوتوغراف مليئة بالنماذج و الأسماء و عناوين الصور ...الجانب الخير للتصوير .. تمثل في الاستخدام الشهير للصور في أمريكا لايقاظ الضمير .. الجانب المفترس للتصوير .. يشكل قلب التحالف بين الفوتوغراف و السياحة .. حدثت في الولايات المتحدة قبل أي بلد آخر في العالم ..*التصوير الفوتوغرافي هو جرد للخلود .. ضغطة اصبع تكفي أن تغلف الآن لحظة بعينها بسخرية ما بعد الموت .. الصور تبهرنا لأنها تذكرنا بالموت .. وهي في نفس الوقت دعوة للعاطفية .. حيث تحيل الماضي إلى مادة للاهتمام الرقيق*يقول زولا بعد 15 سنة من هواية التقاط الصور .. لا يمكنك أن تدعي برؤيتك شيئاً ما حتى تقوم بتصويره .. بدلاً من تسجيل الواقع أصبحت الصور قاعدة لقياس الطريقة التي تظهر بها الأشياء أمامنا الفوتوغراف حرر الرسم ليتجه إلى وظيفته الأكثر حداثة : التجريدية ..
What do You think about On Photography (1979)?
This book is a great analysis of how photography has changed and how we relate to those changes. Are images just a reproduction of reality, something to keep things alive that have gone before, or are they really an art form?Some of her keen observations on photography are:"Photography does not simply reproduce the real, it recycles it." "To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed. It means putting yourself into a certain relationship to the world that feels like knowledge and therefore, like power". She reminds us that we are largely workaholics! This clarifies why people are so zealous with their new digital cameras. It keeps us working all the time!
—Florence
I found this book utterly maddening. I'm giving it four stars not for the content itself, but for the quality of thinking I did while reading. I'm rather surprised not to have found any comments in other reviews regarding Sontag's horrific tactlessness in her discussions of "freaks" (in the context of Diane Arbus' work). Less shocking but also disappointing: her wholesale dismissal of the Surrealists, or as she calls them two or three times, the Surrealist "militants", which they decidedly were not. Overall, I found the writing -- while at times illuminating -- overwhelmingly and groundlessly judgmental. Sontag's logic is often very, very dubious; she is as dangerous as Camus (I'm thinking of Le mythe de Sisyphe) when it comes to the seductiveness of fine, well-articulated prose which uses its own music to trick the reader into believing the message. Beware.
—Amari
The first 2-3 essays of the book are just astonishing. I've been perusing Sontag's journals for the past year or so, and her intellectual range leads you perilously near to pure jealousy, but then you concede her anomalous mind and simply admire it instead. This seemingly limitless curiosity and brute capacity for knowledge is best exhibited in those first 2-3 essays (particularly the first two, which is why I keep saying "2-3"), and also remains less cloyingly didactic there. For example, her consideration of Diane Arbus at length maintains a level of contemplation and engagement - a recognition of both the potentially nihilistic and exploitative registers of Arbus's "freak" work and its power of imagination and sidewise cultural commentary - that falls by the wayside in the latter half of the book, where I felt lectured to in a more dogmatic mode. The later essays tend to sound polemical, in the negative sense of that word, rather than exploratory. This, for me, is the key difference between someone like Sontag and someone like Didion, to whom comparisons - at least I've noticed this lately - are often drawn. Sontag centers her self in the essays; Didion seeks always to efface herself, though this effacement can be even more telling than Sontag's calling her own bluff. Point being, Sontag can sometimes irk me because her sexy essayistic writing begins to feel claustrophobic; I feel as if I've been seduced into agreeing necessarily with points that aren't as fully developed as they could be. I want to feel that a claim is arguable, and that the writer has enabled dialogue. In the later essays of this book, Sontag writes her readers into a corner. Either way, certainly the most exciting writing on photography I've read.
—Jamie
