Rodchenko
Olympian
I don't think it's fair or sensible to take a short passage out of a densely argued text out of the context of the rest of the argument.
I think On Photography is a great book. I don't agree with everything she says, but it has helped me to understand what the act of photography consists of.
The other books I have found influential from a theoretical viewpoint are:
Thinking Photography - various authors inc Victor Burgin (ed) & Walter Benjamin (and it has a rangefinder on the cover)
Ways of Seeing - John Berger
Photography/Politics One & Two - various authors
Putting Myself In The Picture - Jo Spence
I think On Photography is a great book. I don't agree with everything she says, but it has helped me to understand what the act of photography consists of.
The other books I have found influential from a theoretical viewpoint are:
Thinking Photography - various authors inc Victor Burgin (ed) & Walter Benjamin (and it has a rangefinder on the cover)
Ways of Seeing - John Berger
Photography/Politics One & Two - various authors
Putting Myself In The Picture - Jo Spence
airfrogusmc
Veteran
I agree about Sontag....I also don't agree with everything she says in the book or her summation but she does bring up some interesting points and her comments about very little serious discussion beyond the very superficial and basic technical aspects of images still holds true today.
Murchu
Well-known
The crux of the issue here is that most people believe photography to be a direct representation of reality, so while I find Sontags text overly dramatic, I acknowledge what lies behind what she says and the ease of misrepresenting someone to the world at large. I do feel that life shouldn't be taken too seriously though, and as a society we are far too image conscious these days, not to mention the lions share of what most of us take as gospel everyday is anything but.
So while Sontags snarky and often condescending commentary on photography is often rooted in something with some validity, I question whether these utopian photography ideals she espouses could ever, or will ever exist. To me she is and remains just another crank with a snarky vision of how things should be, and find it amusing her withering treatises on photography get such airplay.
So while Sontags snarky and often condescending commentary on photography is often rooted in something with some validity, I question whether these utopian photography ideals she espouses could ever, or will ever exist. To me she is and remains just another crank with a snarky vision of how things should be, and find it amusing her withering treatises on photography get such airplay.
Sparrow
Veteran
... don't know, but I expect she would call it culinary masturbation anyway
Rodchenko
Olympian
I'm amazed so many people find Sontag 'snarky' and 'negative'. I don't read her like that. Sure, she's critical about some photographic practice, and especially about the glib superficiality which denies the depth and importance of what we are doing, but I think she comes across as someone who loves photography when done with thought and understanding.
tunalegs
Pretended Artist
I don't see her as snarky and negative. Just confused and irrational as regards this particular point.
Jack Conrad
Well-known
Is photographing a person a hostile act, a "subliminal murder?"
Is photographing a person a hostile act, a "subliminal murder?"
Photographing a person isn't an act of negation or annihilation. It's not destructive. If anything it's reproductive. An act of connection. An act of "subliminal sex."
Is photographing a person a hostile act, a "subliminal murder?"
Photographing a person isn't an act of negation or annihilation. It's not destructive. If anything it's reproductive. An act of connection. An act of "subliminal sex."
airfrogusmc
Veteran
Agree again.
Many critics haven't actually read her book. It brings up some very important issues that deserve serious conversation and the fact it is a series of essays that were written over 35 years ago and the issues are still relevant like her point about once we're shocked, we as society need a bigger shock to hold our interest and that was a comment about all media. Also the big question does art influence history or does history influence art. I think she concludes both which i fully agree with. Its an interesting, thought provoking, read.
airfrogusmc
Veteran
It can be very destructive. The way media portrays certain groups like woman in some cases and certain ethnic groups. It can help reenforce stereotypes. I think there are photographs of woman that are fully clothed that are far more pornographic than say Weston's nudes.
KoNickon
Nick Merritt
I am usually very suspicious of things that smack of anti-intellectualism, but everything I read about her, and that she wrote, shows me why intellectuals can get a bad rap. I'm not saying her point isn't worth some small amount of consideration, but that's about it -- a small amount of consideration, nothing more. Seems like no one has ever written more words (under pretentious titles -- "On Photography"; "Regarding the Pain of Others" -- what are these, papal encyclicals?) on topics that no one else thought worthy of more than a passing thought.
Very simple -- if you're in a public space, you are fair game for having someone photograph you. You can tell them that you don't like it, and then it's between you and the photographer -- sue the photog if you like (and I think you'll lose). To use the legal phrase, you have no reasonable expectation of privacy when you are out in public. (And if you're unaware of your picture being taken, how can you say you've been harmed or "murdered"?)
Very simple -- if you're in a public space, you are fair game for having someone photograph you. You can tell them that you don't like it, and then it's between you and the photographer -- sue the photog if you like (and I think you'll lose). To use the legal phrase, you have no reasonable expectation of privacy when you are out in public. (And if you're unaware of your picture being taken, how can you say you've been harmed or "murdered"?)
tunalegs
Pretended Artist
We're not discussing the book in its entirety though. Only this specific idea from it. Would you agree that photography is an act of subliminal murder? A subconscious desire to violate others?
Jamie123
Veteran
I've read it ages ago and if I remember correctly, I didn't have too much trouble making some sense of (some of) it. There are other philosophical texts I find much harder to understand.
That being said, I didn't find it all that fascinating and very much out of date. I think it's mainly influential because it's one of the few texts of it's kind that took a good look at photography at a time when photography started to get really important. But so much has changed in photography and in our relationship to photography in the last 30 years that I think one is better off reading other texts.
airfrogusmc
Veteran
In the context of her overall essay it makes more sense and in some cases, as she goes on to substantiate, it is true. Like the portrayal of woman as only sex objects always being shot down on and in submissive posses. That is killing the idea of woman as being strong and worthy of anything other than sex.
airfrogusmc
Veteran
I do not agree with everything that she says in her essays but there are some real truths in photography today and haven't changed much in 35+ years. The portrayal of woman in media and the fact there is very little real conversations about photographs beyond the superficial and basic technical applications. And the fact we as a society as a whole still crave the next big shock from media.
noisycheese
Normal(ish) Human
After giving Mme. Sontag's assertions much consideration, I am inclined to agree with the above thoughts.
Sontag was a member of that rarefied coterie of east coast intellectual dignitaries who fancy themselves some sort of cerebral elite. This self-appointed coalition are supposedly capable of luminous insight and superior reasoning that the masses of unwashed simian intellectual midgets (AKA the rest of us) can never hope to even remotely grasp.
The reality of the situation is that as someone else pointed out, Sontag was a bitter and negative person who found solace in hurling pseudointellectual malice at others who she perceived as inferior to her and her peers of so-called intellectual superiority.
This type of worldview is the very definition of intellectual bigotry.
While this form of bigotry is based on supposed superior intellect rather than race, national origin or religion, it is bigotry nonetheless and it does not get a free pass because of its alleged intellectual roots.
This statement issued by Mme. Sontag speaks volumes about her thinking processes. She clearly had, shall we say, "issues."
If any other person had made such a statement about the negroid race or the entire mass of humanity of Arabian ancestry, they would be universally reviled, loathed and treated with contempt. Yet somehow the anti-caucasian racism she advocated and espoused brings no outpouring of wrath from her peers that are entrenched in the cloistered retreats of intellectual elitism.
That's what people who are honest and objective call a double standard.
It is also ironic to note that Sontag - who was herself of Caucasoid descent and therefore by her own reasoning one of the many tumors of the white race which supposedly feeds upon the rest of humanity - made no move to withdraw herself from the human race and end her own feeding on the rest of humanity.
How that could be considered anything other than hypocrisy on her part defies logic.
airfrogusmc
Veteran
I don't find her book/essays "On Photography" particularly negative at all. Maybe more of a mirror held up for us to take a serious hard look at what and how we create. Its more an inditement of what man has done to the art form by making shallow, calendar art images that have now come to rule the day and will rule until there is some real dialog about content.
An interesting interview about 5 min in but a very interesting interview of Ralph Gibson.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzMQcE2E-1o
An interesting interview about 5 min in but a very interesting interview of Ralph Gibson.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzMQcE2E-1o
noisycheese
Normal(ish) Human
I will readily agree with you on those points.
You are also correct about the dumbing-down of society as a whole; it is incomprehensible to me that some of the most popular programs on TV are shallow visual twaddle such as "Survivor," "America's Next Top Model" and "Real Housewives of Atlanta/New Jersey/Beverly Hills."
airfrogusmc
Veteran
I will readily agree with you on those points.
You are also correct about the dumbing-down of society as a whole; it is incomprehensible to me that some of the most popular programs on TV are shallow visual twaddle such as "Survivor," "America's Next Top Model" and "Real Housewives of Atlanta/New Jersey/Beverly Hills."
I think thats where she said it was all headed.
Jack Conrad
Well-known
tunalegs
Pretended Artist
The particular section of the book the quote comes from is trying to present the camera as a sort of surrogate weapon through which photographers can act out their aggressive fantasies. Her own particular example is that of people going on safaris to shoot photos of rare animals instead of shooting them dead with a gun.
Although it seems to make sense superficially, finding prey, shooting it, etc. - it doesn't really make all that much sense if one tries to look any deeper than the surface.
Honestly as a whole the book is not entirely bad, but a lot of it is oddly, maybe inappropriately anachronistic these days.
And I still don't see photography as an act of sublimated murder. The very concept of sublimation is primarily Freudian and I don't really buy that so much of our lives necessarily comes from suppressed subconscious sexual urges.