Reviews

Review: On Photography

Editorial Review - Kirkus Reviews

Susan Sontag has returned photography to the cockpit of discussion it occupied when the exact mechanical image loomed as a threat to the person, to art, to the very relationship between images and reality. The last, essentially, is Sontag's subject, approached--after a splatter of (as yet) unsupported assertions --via touchstone figures: writers, photographers, painters interchangeably. (The book has no illustrations; it assumes, reasonably enough, a common stock of photographic images.) In a vivid, close-set argument, she traces Whitman's theme, ""the levelling of distinctions between the beautiful and the ugly, the important and the trivial,"" through Lewis Hine and Walker Evans to its ""last sigh,"" the 1955 Family of Man exhibit, apex of ""sentimental humanism""--and jumps to the toast of 1972, Diane Arbus, in whose world ""everybody is an allen."" But levelling down, Arbus-like, is also ""lowering the threshhold of what is terrible,"" as much modern art does, as Surrealism does systematically: ""all subjects are merely objets trouvÉs."" So we are confronted with photography, reputedly realistic, as the art ""that has best shown how to juxtapose the sewing machine and the umbrella,"" and with the photographer as ""the voyeuristic stroller who discovers the city as a landscape of voluptuous extremes."" Beauty falls, morality falls, as a standard; ""photographic seeing"" is the criterion, following ""the idea that everything in the world could be made interesting through the camera."" So photographs become--Sontag adduces a misconstruction of Proust's--""not so much an instrument of memory as an invention or replacement."" Images, that is. Dismemberments of reality. The Chinese want only complete, correct views, Sontag observes in a stunning windup. For them, a ""good"" picture; for us, a good picture. With an anthology of quotations (also shards of reality) from the unlikes of Daguerre, Man Ray, and a 1976 Minolta ad for further agitation.

User reviews

Review: On Photography

User Review - Mel - Goodreads

Though at times difficult to read, Sontag's essays on photography consistently blew my hair back. A lot of the stuff she writes about is wildly prescient and it definitely got me thinking. There were ... Read full review

Review: On Photography

User Review - Thomas Haverkamp - Goodreads

I read this book in two episodes due to all the Christmas events. But when I then finished it I knew that I was quite impressed with this book. The book is over 30 years old and you would expect that ... Read full review

Review: On Photography

User Review - Ben - Goodreads

Sontag is a genius, and moreover a very good writer. And her polemical inclination gives her just that hint of sass that makes good thinkers great. The book has all the fixins to be one of her best ... Read full review

Review: On Photography

User Review - Michael - Goodreads

I bought this book on a business trip in London. Having studied photography in college, I was interested to hear an academic analysis of how photography has influenced our culture. Sontag's book is ... Read full review

Review: On Photography

User Review - Ara Lucia Ashburne - Goodreads

As Jana states in the review (two before mine) this book was written so long ago much of Sontag's thinking is already a part of what is thought today about photography. But reading it now, all I could ... Read full review

Review: On Photography

User Review - Sketchbook - Goodreads

Out of focus. Read full review

Review: On Photography

User Review - Jean-Marie Schlömer - Goodreads

Hmm, that was not what I expected after having read many recommendations for this book. Then again, I am not sure what I expected, because thinking about photography does not seem like something I'd ... Read full review

Review: On Photography

User Review - Kotryna - Goodreads

Absolutely loved this book from the first page to the very end - good weekend read for those like me who can not photograph and who hardly could appreciate good photography without additional ... Read full review

Review: On Photography

User Review - Jimmy - Goodreads

"In the battered Penguin paperback edition that I've been reading there were no examples of the many photographs which Sontag referred to in the text, photographs that are freely available, though ... Read full review

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