Sejanus.Aelianus
Veteran
As Freud never said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
It seems obvious, to me, that a camera is just a camera and only becomes a weapon when you hit someone with it.
It seems obvious, to me, that a camera is just a camera and only becomes a weapon when you hit someone with it.
Ranchu
Veteran
I think she was right about no things, just so that's clear. The problem with both your argument and hers in general is that you're saying that because a photograph COULD be viewed as demeaning or dehumanizing, all photos are demeaning and dehumanizing to one extent or another. It's claptrap.
noisycheese
Normal(ish) Human
Amen to that.
airfrogusmc
Veteran
Or there are some photographs that have changed course of history for good and for bad.
DanOnRoute66
I now live in Des Moines
I think you nailed it, H2. And, by "nailed it," I don't mean anything sexual, or violent, or anything.Sorry but I don't buy into it...this is way too heavy & intellectually shallow
perhaps that once was the view of a 'Primitive Culture' ...along the lines of stealing a soul (though there may be some truth)
Yes I know Ms. Sontag was considered 'literary' and a Bright woman she was
but this train of thought seems rather odd & out of place considering her relationship with Ms Liebowitz
perhaps it waa a Cruel Jealous Mind F***directed at Ms Liebowitz
or just a silly play with Words
noisycheese
Normal(ish) Human
I think you nailed it, H2. And, by "nailed it," I don't mean anything sexual, or violent, or anything.
AHA!! You left out subliminal! You mean it as subliminal nailing!!
airfrogusmc
Veteran
Sorry but I don't buy into it...this is way too heavy & intellectually shallow
perhaps that once was the view of a 'Primitive Culture' ...along the lines of stealing a soul (though there may be some truth)
Yes I know Ms. Sontag was considered 'literary' and a Bright woman she was
but this train of thought seems rather odd & out of place considering her relationship with Ms Liebowitz
perhaps it waa a Cruel Jealous Mind F***
or just a silly play with Words
She wrote the essays that formed the book more than a decade before she hooked up with Leibovitz.
I think Annie strongest images were those of Sontag when she was dying of cancer.
rbsinto
Well-known
I always thought the best review of Ms. Sontag's work came from Crash Davis in the film Bull Durham.
airfrogusmc
Veteran
That is funny.
But she does bring up some interesting points and those points create conversation. Were still talking right now about a book that was written over 30 years ago.
rbsinto
Well-known
Because I always wear a vest, and carry two, three or four old film cameras when I'm on the streets, I am often photographed, either by snipers or persons who ask to take a shot.
My immediate gut feeling? Knock yourself out.
Why would I care? They're not stealing my soul, and if they want to spend untold hours Photoshopping the image so I'm having sex with a goat, then good luck to them.
Really, I've got far more important things to worry about than being photographed on the street when I probably appear in who knows how many surveillance videos at the supermarket, bank, gas station and so on every day anyway.
tunalegs
Pretended Artist
Well we had been until some of us were told to not question her genius on the subject.
airfrogusmc
Veteran
If you read my earlier posts I clearly said I didn't agree with everything she wrote but I do agree with some things and one thing I do agree with is that powerful photographs can be very harmful to some as I pointed. Also see the way she also predicted the state of our current media. I also agree that there is still very little real conversation and criticism beyond f/stops and shutter speeds of photography like there is with other art forms. I also stated I disagreed with her summation but it is clear that the book is a conversation starter.
Paul Jenkin
Well-known
Such twaddle sells books. Being controversial for its own sake doesn't the statement has any relevance or is worthy of further discussion.
TheFlyingCamera
Well-known
Part of the problem is that there's more than just one "photography", and Ms. Sontag doesn't clarify which one she's talking about. There's photography as in day-to-day snapshots of daily record type where the primary if not only goal is to create an evidentiary record that "We were HERE. We did THIS. We EXISTED".
Then there's "fine art" photography where the image recorded is non-evidentiary in any sense beyond the fact that the objects recorded by the camera had a physical existence and passed in front of the camera's lens at some moment in time. The purpose of "fine art" photography is about representing the imagination and inner perception of the photographer as he or she imposed it upon the external world.
I'm leaving digital 'photography' out of the equation for the moment since within the overly broad realm of digital 'photography' it is possible to create parts of or entire images which have every appearance of being real but in fact are only simulacra of real objects and never had physical existence. Whether something photoshopped/Maya'ed is a photograph at all or in fact something altogether different is a separate argument.
In-between "fine art" and "record" photography there is a vast, indiscriminate middle which grasps alternatingly at either pole, or combines elements of both in varying degrees. The middle contains everything from porn to advertising to camera club photos to commercial portraiture. The categorization from one extreme to the other is a matter of intentionality - at the one pole, there is one intent only - to mechanically reproduce the scene that happens to be in front of the camera. The presence of the camera in this type of photograph is paramount - the image would not exist but for the camera - would that group of people be hugging each other around the barbecue grill if they were NOT posing for the camera to record the fact that they were at the barbecue, and they had a relationship?
At the other, the camera's presence is merely an incident of the creative process. The scene would exist even if only in the artist's mind, and the camera happens to be the tool by which it is brought into physical being. Were it not created by a camera, the artist would paint, sculpt, or draw their idea into being. Gregory Crewdson would probably paint his creations if he couldn't photograph them, because they represent an inner reality that is represented by physical objects but the relationship between those objects outside the frame of the photograph may be anywhere from coincidental to entirely imaginary.
Using Crewdson as an example again, he stages scenes for his camera using real people in real places, acting out scenes that convey emotions. Within these real places and scenes, there is virtually nothing he does not control (and when shooting in studio sets, there is truly NOTHING in the image that is not controlled by him). Yet the actors portraying the frustrated john ejecting his middle-aged prostitute from the taxi in the middle of the junkyard are just actors who may have just met that afternoon for the first time. The event portrayed never happened organically - the story it tells is inherently false. Neither the hooker nor the john nor the cab driver are actually a hooker, a john, or a cab driver. But for the photograph in front of us, we have no way to know that in fact a john EVER discharged from a taxi a middle-aged hooker (or any hooker for that matter) in the junkyard.
Neither the barbecue nor the Crewdson photograph constitute a murder in any sense of the term. The first one is proof of life, documentary evidence that maintains an existence beyond the grave. The other is a bringing to life of something that does not otherwise exist. This is not to say that photography CANNOT violate, injure or otherwise kill, but rather to refute violence as an inherent natural quality of a photograph.
airfrogusmc
Veteran
Have you read the book? She was making a point that in some cases I agree with. When this kind of harm thing creeps into society as a whole it can become subconscious and sometimes photographers just reenforce negative things that can hurt without intent or conscious knowledge of the harm being done. The images of blacks in all kinds of things like movies, DW Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, is one that comes to mind. These negative stereo types were also in a lot of other images in photography and other mediums and were totally acceptable at the time and were very harmful though at the time many photographers and others were creating those images and some were just working on a subconscious level without any harm (murder) intended.
And I believe as Adams did about categories.
"Lets hope that categories will be less rigid in the future; there has been too much of placing photography in little niches-commercial. pictorial, documentary, and creative( a dismal term). Definitions of this kind are inessential and stupid; good photography remains good photography no matter what we name it. I would like to think of it as just “photography” ; of each and every photograph containing the best qualities in proper degree to achieve its purpose. We have been slaves to categories, and each has served as a kind of concentration camp for the spirit.”-Ansel Adams
Back to Sontag, I think she makes some valid points in some cases and certainly worthy of a dialog.
And I believe as Adams did about categories.
"Lets hope that categories will be less rigid in the future; there has been too much of placing photography in little niches-commercial. pictorial, documentary, and creative( a dismal term). Definitions of this kind are inessential and stupid; good photography remains good photography no matter what we name it. I would like to think of it as just “photography” ; of each and every photograph containing the best qualities in proper degree to achieve its purpose. We have been slaves to categories, and each has served as a kind of concentration camp for the spirit.”-Ansel Adams
Back to Sontag, I think she makes some valid points in some cases and certainly worthy of a dialog.
TheFlyingCamera
Well-known
I'm not saying everything she says is wrong - I think she has an overly pessimistic view of photography, and is intentionally selecting her examples to make her point, even when it may be inaccurate and an over-generalization. Of course photographers reflect negative ideas as well as positive ideas. Birth of A Nation exists, as does Django Unchained, as does Schindlers List as does Triumph of the Will, Jude Suss and Protocols of the Elders of Zion. For every Cruising, there's a Paris is Burning. But we can't condemn cinema or photography as a morally flawed medium, just because some humans some times misue the medium.
But when you assert that Photography, proper, the sum total of all types of photographic reproduction, is a form of subliminal murder, you'd better be able to back it up. Granted Susan Sontag is now dead and we can't debate her assertion with her, but I would really like to hear her explain how a family snapshot at the backyard barbecue is murder.
The assertion that the photograph is murder is dependent upon the assumption that the photographer is somehow discreet from the subject of the photograph. What then of self-portraiture? is that suicide? And what about the family barbecue again, where someone sets the self-timer and gets in the group? or even if they are operating the camera, they nonetheless are part of the group and not an external third party?
For Sontag's assertion to work, there needs to be an external other, which is not universally true. Photography as practiced by its billions of practitioners daily, questions notions of identity and relationships. At what point does the photographer become a part of the photograph, a part of the group or community being photographed, and at what point do they separate and become the photographer? If we exclude vernacular photography from the equation (photographs by indigenous populations for indigenous consumption), then Sontag's argument begins to carry more water, because you can posit an external photographer alien to the subject, and you can posit an involuntary relationship between the photographer and subject.
But when you assert that Photography, proper, the sum total of all types of photographic reproduction, is a form of subliminal murder, you'd better be able to back it up. Granted Susan Sontag is now dead and we can't debate her assertion with her, but I would really like to hear her explain how a family snapshot at the backyard barbecue is murder.
The assertion that the photograph is murder is dependent upon the assumption that the photographer is somehow discreet from the subject of the photograph. What then of self-portraiture? is that suicide? And what about the family barbecue again, where someone sets the self-timer and gets in the group? or even if they are operating the camera, they nonetheless are part of the group and not an external third party?
For Sontag's assertion to work, there needs to be an external other, which is not universally true. Photography as practiced by its billions of practitioners daily, questions notions of identity and relationships. At what point does the photographer become a part of the photograph, a part of the group or community being photographed, and at what point do they separate and become the photographer? If we exclude vernacular photography from the equation (photographs by indigenous populations for indigenous consumption), then Sontag's argument begins to carry more water, because you can posit an external photographer alien to the subject, and you can posit an involuntary relationship between the photographer and subject.
TheFlyingCamera
Well-known
And as to the Adams quote about categories, perhaps I mis-stated when I spoke of categorization of images, but rather that there is a spectrum from vernacular to art. I did however, clearly state that photographs that are neither extreme can borrow elements from one, the other or both in varying degrees. Today we look at Richard Avedon's fashion work as fine art; that does not mean the original purpose, to sell clothes and magazines about clothes, has been erased and does not inform the understanding of those photographs. We can certainly look at Dovima with the Elephants and appreciate it without context as a fine art photograph - the product of the creative imagination of an artist. But it makes no sense without the understanding that she's wearing a Dior dress and the photo was made for Harpers Bazaar magazine. So to categorize something with exclusivity is far more an act of murder than photographing, for it renders the object and our understanding of it incapable of change. The same could be said of Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will. There is no way of course to escape the fact that it is a Nazi propaganda film, but to discredit it as such is to deny why it still affects people who watch it today - it is a brilliant piece of cinema, using masterful technique and understanding of the power of the medium.
tunalegs
Pretended Artist
It should probably be noted that throughout the book Sontag claims photography is many things. Even though in this passage she claims photography to be sublimated murder, done with a sublimated gun - in other passages she makes other claims such as photography being an effort to preserve or own moments in time. A bit contradictory in a way, but it is obvious that she didn't think photography was only subliminal murder of the subjects.
Since we're discussing that particular bit though, I had to disagree with her view, and to me it seems like a bit of freudian hyperbole designed to get attention. It's a bit like saying a cigar is a sublimated wiener.
Since we're discussing that particular bit though, I had to disagree with her view, and to me it seems like a bit of freudian hyperbole designed to get attention. It's a bit like saying a cigar is a sublimated wiener.
Jack Conrad
Well-known
A photographer doesn't have to behave as a sociopath. They could just as readily think of a camera as a tool that allows them to sublimate their vision, to photograph someone as an act of subliminal creation - a soft creation, an appreciation of respect appropriate to the sacredness of other people's lives and perceptions.
There's no need for a photographer to shoot to kill, or possess, or control.
That is the behavior of a psychopath. A subliminal path to separation from humanity.
airfrogusmc
Veteran
No need for it but history has shown it happens and sometimes by even those that do not realize that they're doing it. And there is no argument from me that it can also be an instrument for good.