On photogrpahy--a book full of non-sense??

Sean Reid said:
: Contrary to Sontag's assertions, the camera is certainly not a phallus, by any stretch of the imagination.
Sean
Click to expand...

The camera not. But the lenses maybe. For a certain kind of "photographers" i could imagine this to be the true background. Thinks about some of those at P.net ! :D

But this is a remark "entre nous" only, officially I have to refuse this idea, feministic exaggerations, as usually . ;)
Bertram
 
Bertram2 said:
The camera not. But the lenses maybe. For a certain kind of "photographers" i could imagine this to be the true background. Thinks about some of those at P.net ! :D

But this is a remark "entre nous" only, officially I have to refuse this idea, feministic exaggerations, as usually . ;)
Bertram
Click to expand...

"reject" I meant, sorry ! One of these embarrassing mistakes which still happen when I mix two foreign languages ( je refuse in French) which I both do not speak properly. :rolleyes:
Bertram
 
kbg32 said:
I think you should read some of these other books when you have the time and are in the right frame of mind. You might find yourself actually enjoying them and understanding more of photography's importance, on many levels. To understand more of who and what we are, and do, is important.
.
Click to expand...

I think I overlooked this last part of your post in replying to its substance. Having now noticed it, I'll offer a piece of advice that you can consider or reject, as you see fit. I'm constantly reminded that, when I am talking with other people on the Internet, I generally know very little about them, their backgrounds, their expertise, what they do and don't know, have or have not read or done, etc.. For one to proceed as if he or she did know these things can easily lead to many mistakes. I'd suggest that you make no assumptions about what I have or have not read, what my understanding of photography's importance might or might not be, what levels that understanding might or might not operate on, etc.. In short, you don't know me from Adam, in fact, and that's largely true for most of the people you'll meet via the Internet. That being the case, I find it better not to assume. Defend Sontag as vigorously as you'd like, but don't patronize.

Sean
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Contrary to Sontag's assertions, the camera is certainly not a phallus, by any stretch of the imagination.
Click to expand...

hehe, somebody beat you to the point. :) why can't a camera be a phallus? not ever?
 
"...it's better not to assume. Defend Sontag as vigorously as you'd like, but don't patronize."

This has generally been a quality of the posts here at RFF: to honourably defend one's opinion, rather than to attack the other's.
 
Confusing stuff!

Confusing stuff!

Apologies for reviving this old thread! I've only recently started reading Susan Sontag's "On Photography". Now, I've always assumed I wasn't stupid. I may not be clever, but not stupid, either. I've a PhD (if that means anything). And I don't get it. I just don't get it. Any of it. I read paragraphs or pages and am just stunned by what to me sounds like the stereotypical intellectual goat-wool-sock-wearing stringing together of long words purportedly describing art, society, politics, love, life, the nature of reality or all of the above.

And I am sure it's all me. This is by no means a criticism of the book. I blame it on being a scientist: mention anything to do with protein chemistry and I perk up. Or maybe it's to do with looking for a job. Potentially coupled with moving continents. Oh and the whole just-got-engaged-how-do-I-prevent-my-parents-from-driving-me-mad-thing :bang: . Or just stressed. But the book's got me baffled. It'll go back on the shelf tonight. And maybe in the future, when I sit on a crummy sofa in London's crummier areas, or on my porch on the outskirts of Boston (MA, not Lincs), I'll give it another go. And then it might work better.

Hm. Sorry. Just needed to vent. Do ignore this post. :eek:

Doctor Zero
 
Doctor Zero said:
Apologies for reviving this old thread! I've only recently started reading Susan Sontag's "On Photography". Now, I've always assumed I wasn't stupid. I may not be clever, but not stupid, either. I've a PhD (if that means anything). And I don't get it. I just don't get it. Any of it. I read paragraphs or pages and am just stunned by what to me sounds like the stereotypical intellectual goat-wool-sock-wearing stringing together of long words purportedly describing art, society, politics, love, life, the nature of reality or all of the above.

And I am sure it's all me. This is by no means a criticism of the book. I blame it on being a scientist: mention anything to do with protein chemistry and I perk up.
Click to expand...
Presumably the books you read about chemistry and find easy to follow would be much harder for someone lacking your specialist knowledge to read and understand. By the same token, Sontag comes from an intellectual discipline that has its own language, stylistic rules, and specialist knowledge. I think people often accuse philosophers and other theorists of being pretentious when really they, the reader, are just not familiar with the traditions of the genre concerned, so find it hard to understand what is being said. (This is not meant to be patronising, btw: just as I understand little about science beyond what I read in popular science books but have a degree in philosophy so find reading Hegel a fine pursuit, you have a science degree and probably get kicks reading lots of stuff I would find completely incomprehensible).

It's also true that some of what passes for contemporary philosophy is pure guff. Anything by Deleuze & Guattari for example.

It's a while since I read On Photography but my recollection of it is that it contains about half a dozen excellent aphorisms (none of which I can now remember, but all of which seemed to contain an important truth), but no overall convincing argument. I should probably re-read it.

Ian
 
Last edited:
It's been my impression that once you have figured out the main point she is making, there's no significant revelation at all, but rather a reaction of "who cares?". The title "On Photography" is itself enough to make one roll one's eyes. Put it in Latin and it sounds like a papal bull.
 
"in the fairy tale of photography the magic box insures veracity and banishes error, compesates for inexperience and rewards innocence." p. 53

my favorite quote, especially out-of-context.
 
She does have a fine line of bs, but there are ideas (abut media and images) in "On Photography" worth considering; the main problem is, those ideas were kicking around at least since the advent of pop art in the middle 50s, and she just recooked them.

The hard thing to accept about somebody who is portrayed as America's leading public intellectual is that she was wrong on just about everything she ever took a strong stand on. Read her fantasy about Cuba sometime; or, better, not.

JC
 
You're not the only one. I've started reading the book quite some time ago (meaning, over a year ago) and it keeps me stunned. There's so much BS in that book, I'm thinking she did it on purpose. Maybe it was meant to be a sarcastic piece?

Anywa, see what I ran into here: http://shardsofphotography.blogspot.com/search?q=sontag . I don't mind showing off my stupidity, so burn me if you want. :)
 
I haven't read your whole page, but your first post seems to me to be in complete agreement with Sontag. An addiction to hyper-reality is a form of alienation, after all. Not all alienation is bad - much of it is a direct product of the fact that we are conscious beings, and therefore both in the world and simultaneously detached observers of it - so when you say "[the photographer is] addicted to seeing slices of reality that seem more real, more interesting, more alluring than reality", you are very precisely describing an aspect of alienation, one that is a prerequisite for any art.

Ian
 
Last edited:
iml said:
I haven't read your whole page, but your first post seems to me to be in complete agreement with Sontag. An addiction to hyper-reality is a form of alienation, after all. Not all alienation is bad - much of it is a direct product of the fact that we are conscious beings, and therefore both in the world and simultaneously detached observers of it - so when you say "[the photographer is] addicted to seeing slices of reality that seem more real, more interesting, more alluring than reality", you are very precisely describing an aspect of alienation, one that is a prerequisite for any art.
Click to expand...

Ian, perhaps I don't understand alienation properly but as I understand it alienation is the opposite of getting more involved with reality, of getting into the skin of reality.

On the other hand... needing something that seems more real, alluring or interesting may indeed be a facet of alienation. The larger reality is replaced by a far more narrower slice of that reality, thus alienating you from that larger reality. But, isn't that simply life? We cannot live and experience the larger reality but only a very limited subset of it, the subset that we can feel, hear, smell, see, taste, experience and "understand". Does that make us alienated? No, as it would mean that we are all alienated, which would than be the norm not deviant behaviour. IMO Sontag is really talking about alienation as in deviant behaviour, not as it being the norm.
 
RML said:
IMO Sontag is really talking about alienation as in deviant behaviour, not as it being the norm.
Click to expand...

I think you underestimate her, I'm fairly sure Sontag would have recognised than art is impossible without some form of self-conscious distancing from reality, which is by definition an alienated consciousness. I don't think she would find anything to disagree with when you say, "On the other hand... needing something that seems more real, alluring or interesting may indeed be a facet of alienation. The larger reality is replaced by a far more narrower slice of that reality, thus alienating you from that larger reality. But, isn't that simply life?"

Reading your later post, about photography as violation, I think you make the same confusion, you read her comment that the act of taking someone's picture is a violation as a call for policing the act of photography rather than merely as an observation about the psychology of picture-taking (I'm fairly sure she would make similar observations about portrait painting too, for example). Words like "alienation" and "violation" may suggest she simply has a downer on photography, but I think that's a misreading. She's describing some of the subconscious impetus behind the the act of making a portrait more than proscribing or judging that impetus. She uses deliberately loaded words because she has a polemical bent, but the words are not necessarily inaccurate. So, I have no doubt at all that taking someone's photograph is an appropriation - i.e., a violation - of their personal space and sense of self, especially if they have not given their consent or don't like the way the result shows them, but it's also clear that such pictures can often reveal something profound about their subject. In other words, the violation is part of the reason for making the photograph in the first place, and calling it a violation is not an argument for not doing it.

As I say, it's a long time since I read the book, but I don't remember it being proscriptive of photography in the way you're reading it. I'll re-read it when I work out who borrowed my copy.

Ian
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom