she wrote ""subliminal murder", not "murder", by the way. seems, that some deliberately want to understand the sentence in a simplified way.
Can anything useful can be made from debating one sentence from a philosophical book on photography.
I'm not sure I would have the intellect to fully understand the issues that the book grapples with, but how can you be so dismissive of one line from a book if you don't know it's context?
i think, that's a good point. but nevertheless i think noisycheeses first post may be a good starting point for a discussion.
i haven't read the book either (but want to do it soon). but just referring to this sentence, i think she was more interested in the photographer than into the photographed object.
so obvious she didn't thought, that someones soul gets stolen etc., but wanted to analyze the photographers intentions.
i think, it depends on the photographer himself of course. different photographers have different approaches. and also the more professional someone gets and the more someone thinks about his work, the less the "subliminal" part will get.
just think of all the street photography hobbyists now. do you think that really all these guys are just interested in documenting modern social life?
personally i really have the feeling, that for a lot of people, this is just some kind of "hunting" with also involving some "thrill" and owning the photography as "trophy".
some flickr streams really look like walls with hanged up trophies of shot people to me.
nowadays sontag maybe would write about some kind of youtube videos, too. a camera in your hand or a smartphone may indeed used like a weapon. and you are hopefully on the secure end.
some here refer to her personal life and her relationship with leibovitz. i think, that's amateur psychology. writing a book, just you had a bad day..?! come on!
this just comes up when the person is a female anyway (that she is just a little frightened girlie, frustrated, pms,..)
how about painting? rembrandy van rjin a soft murderer? da vinci?
pencil drawing? escher a murderer?
i think, photography and drawing are two different pair of shoes. in both the result is a picture, but the
act of photographing and drawing is quite different.
For me, photography is a celebration of life. It is the crystallization of discrete moments in an ever changing flow. When I take a photo of someone, I am saying, "I see you, I recognize you, I acknowledge you". It is the understanding of the importance of people, things and events around us; the communication of experiences that words cannot convey; the ability to depict personal qualities in the blink of an eye.
i agree. like i wrote above, there a different photographers with different approaches. the sentence in the starting post of this thread standing alone may be a generalisation.
