Is photographing someone a hostile act, a "subliminal murder?"

[noisycheese]

As a writer and the life partner of photographer Annie Leibovitz, Susan Sontag had a unique position from which to observe and write about the photographic process.

In her book, On Photography, Sontag makes the following assertion:

“To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them that they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed. Just as a camera is a sublimation of the gun, to photograph someone is a subliminal murder - a soft murder, appropriate to a sad, frightened time.”

I read her words and was smitten by the undercurrent of apprehensiveness, negativity and torment it revealed in her view of photography (and most probably of life in general). It is sad to see that her words reveal a worldview that was laced with such fear and anguish.

Today, many people - mainly in the U.S., from what I have read - have an outlook of distrust, suspicion and hostility toward photographers in general and street photographers in particular. It seems as if they have taken up where Madame Sontag left off in her jaundiced view of photography and run amok with that spirit of unpropitious hostility toward people who honestly mean them no harm or ill will.

Given that sad state of affairs, I have to ask the following question: Do you agree with Mme. Sontag's assertions that “To photograph people is to violate them," "a camera is a sublimation of the gun" and that "to photograph someone is a subliminal murder - a soft murder, appropriate to a sad, frightened time?”

Whether you agree or disagree with her outlook, please elaborate for our benefit.

 

[Sparrow]

... mostly tosh I'd say

 

[FrankS]

I dislike SS. Her writing on photography is academic blah-blah to me. Photography is not (any kind of) murder.

 

[jsrockit]

I think the answer for me is that it depends on who is photographing and what they are photographing.

 

[MickH]

I agree with Sontag... 'a camera is a sublimation of the gun'. Consider the vocabulary: the photographer's favourite term for making a photograph is 'shooting'. Cameras are 'loaded' with film, photographers 'fire off' a few frames.

As for 'murder' thats just plain silly. As any fule kno, the camera steals souls but leaves the body intact.

All the best!

 

[sepiareverb]

Only grievous bodily injury.

 

[tunalegs]

She's right, a camera is a gun. A gun is also a penis though. So photography is sex ultimately it seems.

If you like freudian nonsense, there a book called Is Your Volkswagen a Sex Symbol? that I seem to recall having a few choice words about what photography "really" is.

 

[bk1970]

Generally speaking, I agree with her. And even when the subject is prepared, or wishes, to be photographed, to at least some degree. One could debate this for a long time.

 

[bk1970]

As for 'murder' thats just plain silly. As any fule kno, the camera steals souls but leaves the body intact.

Yes, exactly!

 

[f16sunshine]

Well I don't know. That's taking it too far (murder).

A Camera as a sublimation of a gun? Well maybe only because guns came first.
I've "Shot" both and often. There is no mutual feeling associated between the two when in the act of shooting.
SS might want to go out and test this for herself before penning the words.

The word shoot originally was most associated with plants if I remember the sarcastic lecture of a botany teacher correctly.
It meant to spring forth or spurt out. You know like a young Bamboo shoot or other plant.
Only later was it used in association with (guns or cameras).

 

[tunalegs]

SS might want to go out and test this for herself before penning the words.

She is dead you know. :angel:

 

[Peter_wrote:]

yes, a bit. somehow you make someone to an object. an representation of him, on which he looses control.

there must be a reason, why most people don't like to be photographed (even most photo hobbyists don't like to be photographed)

by the way, i think it was Honoré de Balzac, who thought that with each photography his body looses particles, so some kind of bodily injury.

Jules Janin also meant, more in a metaphoric way than Balzac, that a photography takes over the photographed object.

 

[icebear]

Academic hogwash... soft murder, ehh ? Either it's murder and it is only if the victim is dead or it's something else, "theft of soul" or parts thereof, just kidding🙄.

As for the very meaning of writing with light, there is nothing that gets taken away from the subject but the reflection of light.

If you smile and the "victim" smiles it was with consent. Usually you get a good non-verbal sense if someone is OK having his/her picture taken or not. If you don't, you might want to get a check-up😉.

 

[helen.HH]

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

 

[haempe]

...
Today, many people - mainly in the U.S., from what I have read - have an outlook of distrust, suspicion and hostility toward photographers in general and street photographers in particular. It seems as if they have taken up where Madame Sontag left off in her jaundiced view of photography and run amok with that spirit of unpropitious hostility toward people who honestly mean them no harm or ill will.
...

I think you merge things without relation.
The intellectual headaches of S.Sontag have nothing to do with the fear to get unasked published in a unfavorable manner.

 

[Peter_wrote:]

photographing and shooting may have some psychological roots together.

think of photo safaris e.g. ! back then they shot the animals with a rifle to have them taxidermied at home. nowadays they shoot them with the tele zoom and hang their pictures on the wall.

 

[f16sunshine]

She is dead you know. :angel:

Of course but you get my meaning.

 

[telenous]

Sontag herself softened, even questioned (some of) the views expressed in On Photography (1977) in her later Regarding the Pain of Others (2003).


.

 

[tunalegs]

Of course but you get my meaning.

Why bother trying things so you can write about what you know, when writing about what you don't know is easier and more profitable? 🙂

(besides, I don't think even for experiences sake that shooting somebody with a gun is a good idea)

 

[zauhar]

Hogwash, but elegantly put.

Sometimes that's all you need to be a successful academic!

Randy