hepcat
Former PH, USN
From On Photography by Susan Sontag:
"A now notorious first fall into alienation, habituating people to abstract the world into printed words, is supposed to have engendered that surplus of Faustian energy and psychic damage needed to build modern, inorganic societies."
I know this is ripped out of context, but would someone please explain to me what the hell she just said? This is kind of opaque to me.
"A now notorious first fall into alienation, habituating people to abstract the world into printed words, is supposed to have engendered that surplus of Faustian energy and psychic damage needed to build modern, inorganic societies."
I know this is ripped out of context, but would someone please explain to me what the hell she just said? This is kind of opaque to me.
Roger Hicks
Veteran
It's superb value, though, if you're trying to kill time. It reads like 2000.
Cheers,
R.
airfrogusmc
Veteran
He will be better for reading it because then he will know first hand for himself and form his OWN opinion. And who knows he might agree. Not everyone thinks like you do and some can even think for themselves because they took the time to see and experience things for themselves. Nice to be able to think because you have real knowledge not second knowledge.
Sparrow
Veteran
... if that's the criteria then he may as well read Good Companions by J B Priestley ... I didn't get to the end of that one
P. S. ... perhaps the OP would be so good as to read it (on photography) and decide who is offering the best synopsis eh?
P. S. ... perhaps the OP would be so good as to read it (on photography) and decide who is offering the best synopsis eh?
Pioneer
Veteran
That is assuming that what she wrote is "real". And your argument is beginning to sound as if you are advocating that everyone must touch the stove to gain real knowledge. It also sounds as if you are saying that, unless you touch the stove, you cannot claim to know what you are talking about.
Being able to form opinions about a subject does not require one to read every book. Critiquing a specific book is much different than having an opinion of a certain subject. While I do agree that to form an opinion on her book, I must read it, I do not agree that I cannot form an opinion on the philosophy of photography without reading her book.
airfrogusmc
Veteran
Yeah kinda like all those people that get bent about movie that they haven't seen protesting and whatever because their preacher told them it was terrible. So without real knowledge they blindly follow.
What I'm saying isn't touching the stove but reading something to decide for ones self. Who knows, he might agree or it might fire a spark to some amazing creative journey because he disagrees. Maybe he writes a book to contradict her book. If he doesn't read it we'll never know.
This is way beyond ridiculous and with that I am out of this thread so PM me if you want to further your discussion with me. I can tell you I am a better photographer for everything I learned along the way, Even the things I don't agree wtih.
What I'm saying isn't touching the stove but reading something to decide for ones self. Who knows, he might agree or it might fire a spark to some amazing creative journey because he disagrees. Maybe he writes a book to contradict her book. If he doesn't read it we'll never know.
This is way beyond ridiculous and with that I am out of this thread so PM me if you want to further your discussion with me. I can tell you I am a better photographer for everything I learned along the way, Even the things I don't agree wtih.
Ranchu
Veteran
There's no way for you to know that for sure, you might have been better had you not read as much.
Pioneer
Veteran
Have a great weekend and I wish you good light.
I have been ignoring my Contax II for the past two months, and I enjoy using it far more than discussions about the philosophy of photography or Ms Sontag. So I will be out with it for the entire weekend to refresh my soul. And I seriously doubt I will be thinking about Ray Guns or anything else while I am using it.
Sparrow
Veteran
... so have you read it?
aizan
Veteran
speaking of diane arbus:
"When Diane Arbus died in 1971 the library she left behind showed her active interest in myth. Among the volumes found were several by Robert Graves, The White Goddess and The Golden Ass. Others included James Stephens’s The Crock of Gold, J R Tolkien’s The Hobbit, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Sigmund Freud’s An Introduction to Psychoanalysis, and The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, C G Jung’s Modern Man in Search of a Soul. Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zanathustra, and Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces were also there. She was a serious reader and her literary works are an intriguing insight into her development."
"When Diane Arbus died in 1971 the library she left behind showed her active interest in myth. Among the volumes found were several by Robert Graves, The White Goddess and The Golden Ass. Others included James Stephens’s The Crock of Gold, J R Tolkien’s The Hobbit, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Sigmund Freud’s An Introduction to Psychoanalysis, and The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, C G Jung’s Modern Man in Search of a Soul. Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zanathustra, and Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces were also there. She was a serious reader and her literary works are an intriguing insight into her development."
Scrambler
Well-known
This myth describes humanity's first separation from real life into reading about real life. That first separation was so damaging that it caused more and more separation between the real world and humanity until it resulted in the modern, completely artificial, world.
How did I do?
A more thorough paraphrase might be: the written word was one degree of abstraction from reality but internet discussions are the penultimate abstraction.
David Hughes
David Hughes
Hi,
I can't follow the logic of this. Firstly we need to know how many books were in the library and secondly, which were read the most. And some people read for light relief not serious study. And if talking of development we need to know when the books were read... And some people, me included, buy books and read them and think them a load of rubbish. There's some evidence of this in this thread.
Regards, David
___________________
I snap, therefore I think...
David Hughes
David Hughes
Hi,
I'd delete "abstraction" and substitute "distraction" and be a little nearer my version of the truth.
Regards, David
____________________
I snap therefore I exist...
Sejanus.Aelianus
Veteran
Good grief, David! Are you saying that people tell untruths on the internet
Sparrow
Veteran
... but neither fit comfortably with Plato's view do they? (in that play that I can't remember ironically), Plato's concerns were for a weakening of humanity's memory not for our grasp of reality
Anyway, dipping into her text to pull out a random sentence is likely to be as obtuse as picking a random Oblique Strategies card
Anyway, dipping into her text to pull out a random sentence is likely to be as obtuse as picking a random Oblique Strategies card
RichC
Well-known
It would help if you quoted enough to give context!
To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed. It means putting oneself into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge -- and, therefore, like power. A now notorious first fall into alienation, habituating people to abstract the world into printed words, is supposed to have engendered that surplus of Faustian energy and psychic damage needed to build modern, inorganic societies. What is written about a person or an event is frankly an interpretation, as are handmade visual statements, like paintings and drawings. Photographed images do not seem to be statements about the world so much as pieces of it, miniatures of reality that anyone can make or acquire.
Just the bare bones, and leaving aside nuances:
To photograph is to capture reality. To photograph is seemingly to document the world, and, as such, appears to have a certain authority. A necessary step towards our modern society was the invention of printing, but the price we pay for this abstraction of reality is to sacrifice the integrity and understanding gained from experiencing reality first hand through our natural senses. However, words are less treacherous than photography - which is the most common way of informing us about past and present events: words are not reality but an interpretation of the world, whereas photographs appear to capture reality itself.
[Sontag then continues by warning us that photographs, despite this veneer of truth, are themselves as subjective and abstracted from reality as text.]
Seems pretty straightforward and reasonable to me. All Sontag's pointing out is that, unlike the written word and paintings, photographs have a connection to reality and truth, but that because of this unique quality we should be wary of photographs: they might be of reality but are not reality, and they distort truth as easily as words do.[Sontag then continues by warning us that photographs, despite this veneer of truth, are themselves as subjective and abstracted from reality as text.]
In fact, you can boil her entire book down to an exploration of this underlying theme: she is especially concerned with how our perception of reality is affected by the belief that photography is truthful.
(Do bear in mind that "On Photography" was published at the zenith of documentary photography, at a time when film images could and did change politics (e.g. Nick Ut's image of the girl burnt by napalm hastened the end of the Vietnam War). As an aside, Sontag also argued that photographs of violence would anaesthetise us: she was proved right - four decades after she published her book, we have become complacent about images of war, and it is inconceivable that a modern government would be affected by photographs like Ut's. Another example of the march of time is that part of her essay "Photographic Evangels" is now redundant: she discusses why photography fails to gain purchase as fine art with a status equal to paintings in museums. Today, of course, photography has achieved this status, with photographs such as Gursky's "Rheine II" in museums like Tate Modern and selling for millions of pounds. But the change from a current to a historical discussion of photography is not a failing: indeed, knowing how photography was seen in the past is just as relevant to understanding the medium as investigating how it is now seen and functions.)
I can't say I care for Sontag's writing style (better than Heidegger and Derrida - whose writing is especially opaque), and I disagree with her in places, but overall it's a useful book. You also have to bear in mind that it was written nearly 40 years ago - and things move on. In her final book, "Regarding the Pain Of Others", written a year before her death, she returns to photography and revises some of her earlier opinions.
"On Photography" came out in 1977, and by the end of the year was already in its fifth reprint. Since then, it has never been out of print, and has been published in untold editions. There is a reason for this endurance - but it is not an easy read, nor should what she writes be accepted unchallenged (I do not know anyone who accepts this book - nor Barthes' "Camera Lucida" - uncritically.)
As I said in my earlier post, some books are worth reading despite their literary style, not because of it.
mfunnell
Shaken, so blurred
I've just read this whole thread (my general assessment: not such a great idea) and read some of the articles linked from this thread (on the other hand: a pretty good idea
). I also have a thought that I read a few things in Regarding...which resonated with me (whereas with On Photography that kind of thing didn't happen so much). I'll be interested, at least vaguely, to find out if I feel the same way now, some years afterwards. While I'm not necessarily looking forward to it, I do wish to re-read "Regarding the Pain of Others" because my recollection (which I want to confirm or disconfirm) is that Sontag, in that book, appears to have softened her stance against photography and photographs. (An attitude, in On Photography, which I always thought was a tad too glib and [at the time] fashionable, and rather unsustainable if challenged too closely.)
I am glad I read Linfield's article and might follow that up: I felt she raised a number of points which could not be dealt with within the strictures of article length, but which I thought were worth pursuing further. I might be interested in finding out whether she has, but only within my own strictures of limited time...
...Mike
Sejanus.Aelianus
Veteran
It's a nice warm afternoon and I've nothing better to do, so I thought I'd take that first quotation apart...
"To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed."
...sheer nonsense, in my opinion. It reads as if she didn't understand the difference between fantasy and reality.
"It means putting oneself into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge -- and, therefore, like power."
...no, it doesn't. A recorded image stores information. To gain knowledge from the information is a separate process.
"A now notorious first fall into alienation, habituating people to abstract the world into printed words is supposed to have engendered that surplus of Faustian energy and psychic damage needed to build modern, inorganic societies."
...oh yes? If I could make this seem like English it might mean something but I doubt, even then, that it would.
"What is written about a person or an event is frankly an interpretation, as are handmade visual statements, like paintings and drawings."
...OK. I'm somewhat amazed to find myself thinking that this actually means something and, moreover, I agree with it! Can she keep this up?
"Photographed images do not seem to be statements about the world so much as pieces of it, miniatures of reality that anyone can make or acquire."
...nope, we're back hammering on the looking glass, although I'll give her one reality check point for the last part of the statement, "that anyone can make or acquire."
:angel:
"To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed."
...sheer nonsense, in my opinion. It reads as if she didn't understand the difference between fantasy and reality.
"It means putting oneself into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge -- and, therefore, like power."
...no, it doesn't. A recorded image stores information. To gain knowledge from the information is a separate process.
"A now notorious first fall into alienation, habituating people to abstract the world into printed words is supposed to have engendered that surplus of Faustian energy and psychic damage needed to build modern, inorganic societies."
...oh yes? If I could make this seem like English it might mean something but I doubt, even then, that it would.
"What is written about a person or an event is frankly an interpretation, as are handmade visual statements, like paintings and drawings."
...OK. I'm somewhat amazed to find myself thinking that this actually means something and, moreover, I agree with it! Can she keep this up?
"Photographed images do not seem to be statements about the world so much as pieces of it, miniatures of reality that anyone can make or acquire."
...nope, we're back hammering on the looking glass, although I'll give her one reality check point for the last part of the statement, "that anyone can make or acquire."
:angel: