Susan Sontag

RobC · May 21, 2015

jnanian said:
yup ... !

i made no reference to nazis or anything similar to that ..
just that sometimes people who love their system of doing things so much
let it cloud their judgement ( maybe ) and are not nice towards people who act or think differently ...
same thing happened in this thread to a certain degree ... people didn't like what she had to say
so they claim she had no right to say it ... or in the lik or kinkade threads ... mr lik sold a photograph for millions
or when mr kinkade died, people say nasty things about them and suggest they don't deserve any of what they got ...
same old same old ...

i suppose someone had to mention nazis for godwin's law to take effect

You are naive in the extreme if you don't think people try to influence others. What was the point of her "On photography" book? What is the point of any book? If it isn't to influence others in some way then it is pointless. So it therefore follows that anyone writing in this forum is doing exactly the same whether intentionally as a control freak or indirectly by writing meaningful common sense practical approach on how to do it their way. The trick is to be able to sift the useful information from the BS without getting worked up about it. The problems occur when one group considers it useful good information and another considers it BS. In this instance I personally think it was a book of BS and am entitled to say so. Does that entitle you to get on your high horse? Arguing about the argument is an act of futility.

benjiboy · May 21, 2015

How many art critics can paint, or theatre critics act ?, it's sometimes better to view things from the outside not know about the technical aspects and to look at them on a purely emotional and intellectual level because so many photographs are technically flawless and completely without emotional content or meaning, Susan Sontag wasn't a photographer but a woman with a prodigious intellect and insight. There are several points she makes in "On Photography" that I don't agree with and I admit I had to look up some of the words she used in the dictionary but I'm very glad she wrote the book because it has so much food for thought in it.

Jim Jones · May 21, 2015

A professional "outsider" author can write for and sell to other outsiders, even though her books seem flawed to those with more experience in the subject. Sontag had the right to ply her trade with a book on a relatively unfamiliar subject. After all, her book was a social commentary, not an Ansel Adams how-to do it manual. We photographers also have the right to warn others with our opinions of her book.

removed account4 · May 21, 2015

RobC said:
You are naive in the extreme if you don't think people try to influence others. What was the point of her "On photography" book? What is the point of any book? If it isn't to influence others in some way then it is pointless. So it therefore follows that anyone writing in this forum is doing exactly the same whether intentionally as a control freak or indirectly by writing meaningful common sense practical approach on how to do it their way. The trick is to be able to sift the useful information from the BS without getting worked up about it. The problems occur when one group considers it useful good information and another considers it BS. In this instance I personally think it was a book of BS and am entitled to say so. Does that entitle you to get on your high horse? Arguing about the argument is an act of futility.

rob c,

naive to the extreme ?
i never said she, you or anyone else were not permitted to have an opinion ..
can you please point out where i stated that ?
i actually said the opposite that you, susan sontag, or anyone else can write a book on photography
and it would be as valid and credible as an expert in the field. ( look back a few pages )

obviously you haven't read many of the posts apug ...
plenty of people who will not think twice of badmouthing you
if you say you use sunny 16, a lomo, use expired film or you believe a digital camera
uses a light sensitive material ( sensor ) to capture an image it records. ..
... and plenty of spoiled grapes about people gaining fame and others suggesting they don't deserve it ..

the point of her book ? it was to write about photography.
it was required reading when i got my degree ... shock of the new, the end of art theory, the end of the history of art
as well the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction, things written by plato and a whole bunch of other stuff were required too ...

have fun with your camera and in the dark
john

bdial · May 21, 2015

After reading all this, my conclusion is that I need to dig out my copy to try and understand why people think it is so bad.

I don't recall anything in particular good or bad, from my reading of it a few years ago. But, for those interested in their work gaining some sort of general acceptance, reading what non-photographers might say about photography could be a very useful exercise.

Ken Nadvornick · May 21, 2015

RobC said:
You are naive in the extreme if you don't think people try to influence others. What was the point of her "On photography" book? What is the point of any book? If it isn't to influence others in some way then it is pointless. So it therefore follows that anyone writing in this forum is doing exactly the same whether intentionally as a control freak or indirectly by writing meaningful common sense practical approach on how to do it their way. The trick is to be able to sift the useful information from the BS without getting worked up about it. The problems occur when one group considers it useful good information and another considers it BS. In this instance I personally think it was a book of BS and am entitled to say so. Does that entitle you to get on your high horse? Arguing about the argument is an act of futility.

Very good post. Unfortunately, now it's your turn to become the means to an unrelated end. No good deed goes unpunished...

Ken

flavio81 · May 21, 2015

jnanian said:
cause it is in bad taste ?

Why? It seems that this belief is specific to certain countries or perhaps certain religion. In my country there is no such taboo. There is no rational reason to criticize what dead people had done in the past. Otherwise we should then speak only positive things about Adolf Hitler, Stalin, Mao... you get the idea.

blansky · May 21, 2015

flavio81 said:
Why? It seems that this belief is specific to certain countries or perhaps certain religion. In my country there is no such taboo. There is no rational reason to criticize what dead people had done in the past. Otherwise we should then speak only positive things about Adolf Hitler, Stalin, Mao... you get the idea.

Not saying I agree or disagree but the perception in Canada and USA is more to the tone of don't badmouth people who can no longer defend themselves. It sort or falls under the fair play heading.

Obviously the tyrants you mentioned and perhaps famous people in general are not included in this because they put themselves in the limelight to begin with.

Of course in today's world of the internet and anonymity the sport of character assassination is pretty common.

removed account4 · May 21, 2015

Ken Nadvornick · May 21, 2015

That worked well...

David Allen · May 21, 2015

Shame - for a while one of Clive's scurrilous posts actually engendered some interesting debate.

Now I don't know why people are continuing to post.

Oooh er - I have just posted.

Bests,

David.
www.dsallen.de

David Allen · May 21, 2015

Oh and just to go overboard, Marx, Adolf Hitler, Stalin, Buddha, Mao, Moses, Lenin, Jesus, Che Guevara, Allah, Emily Pankhurst, Steve Jobs, Edward de Bono, Albert Einstein, Larry Page, Ansel Adams, Bill Gates and Edwin Land, etc were all 'great' in terms of the effect that they have had on history. As persons, we - at least in the West - would shy away from criticising them as people BUT would correctly criticise what their EFFECT on history was.

Bests,

David.
ww.dsallen.de

gzinsel · May 21, 2015

game on !!!!

Bill Burk · May 21, 2015

I have a problem with Susan Sontag saying all photographs are memento mori.

I spent some time feeling she is so wrong about me.

But the more I try to come up with examples to prove her wrong... the more I find she might have been right about that point.

I started out with the example that when I was younger, I had no recollection that the photography of mountain scenes had anything to do with recording a scene I thought would vanish from wilderness.

As I get older, I sometimes have in my mind that I am collecting an image of a place I can't get back to again... so now my photographs may be more memento mori than they used to be.

But even the vintage photographs, I think now, I was a little worried that wilderness would be destroyed, aspenglow would fade for all time, so maybe even then I was concerned that the mountains might not be there much longer.

gzinsel · May 21, 2015

well said Bill.

eddie · May 21, 2015

Bill Burk said:
As I get older, I sometimes have in my mind that I am collecting an image of a place I can't get back to again... so now my photographs may be more memento mori than they used to be.

Interesting, Bill. I do think, to a certain extent, all photographs are memento mori. Even when revisiting the location of a previous photo, our lives have changed with the years, regardless of whether the location has seen any change. Experiences, over the years, have altered our perceptions and, with it, how we see the world around us. Still, when looking at our old work, we see the moment as it was- not necessarily as we'd see it now. The changed perspective is a reminder of our mortality, in that we're forced to confront the passage of time.

Ken Nadvornick · May 21, 2015

One of the distinguishing characteristics of a photograph is that it is always an image of a past moment.

One can't image the future because that has yet to arrange itself before the camera. One can't image the present because the camera and subject cannot both occupy the same point in space and time. By the time the light reflected from the subject travels to and strikes the light sensitive medium, the subject that reflected that light will have already changed. Entropy and the Arrow of Time guarantee that change.

Only past moments can ever be recorded in photographs. And by definition, because those moments lie in the unrecoverable past, they are forever dead...

Ken

blansky · May 21, 2015

Which is why I often say that the most remarkable thing that photography is to me is that it stops time.

We have in our hands the only thing ever invented that stops time.

And NOTHING else can. The roller coaster will not stop or slow down.

Which makes every picture we look at nostalgic to some extent, and old pictures, the long ago reality of people for a hundredth of a second.

I tell my clients that the portraits I take of them will be far more powerful to them in a few years.

eddie · May 21, 2015

blansky said:
Which is why I often say that the most remarkable thing that photography is to me is that it stops time.

We have in our hands the only thing ever invented that stops time.

And NOTHING else can.

Which is what is so beautiful, and magical, about it.

blansky · May 21, 2015

Ken Nadvornick said:
And by definition because those moments lie in the unrecoverable past, they are forever dead...

Ken

Or forever alive

eddie · May 21, 2015

blansky said:
Or forever alive

I'm more in this camp. When I look at a photo I made 10, 20, 30 years ago, I don't usually recall the technical aspects (camera/exposure/film choice) but I do remember sensory things, like the smell of the ocean... a breeze which cooled my sunburned neck... the sounds of sea birds... For a brief time, I'm an immortal time traveler.

Jim Jones · May 21, 2015

Ken Nadvornick said:
. . . Only past moments can ever be recorded in photographs. And by definition, because those moments lie in the unrecoverable past, they are forever dead...

Ken

Yet, because they are recorded, they live as long as we preserve the image. The most conspicuous manifestation of immortality is the record in photographs, words, and other deeds that we leave behind. It behooves us to make that record a good one.

cliveh · May 22, 2015

A picture is worth a thousand words. So why don't more books contain visual illustrations to support the text?

Ken Nadvornick · May 22, 2015

blansky said:
Or forever alive

Maybe...

We all die. And when we die our memories die with us. We can tell others what we remember before we die. But those only become new memories for another different person, one more generation blurred and removed from original reality, and equally at risk in only a few additional short years.

Those original realities are, and will forevermore be, unrecoverable. They are as dead and gone as the people who experienced them and are now nothing more than boxes of bones under a headstone. Once those bones were living people who also had memories. But those memories are now as dead as they are. And no matter how hard we try not to notice, that time of reckoning is coming for us all. Entropy and the arrow of time guarantee it.

Living only in someone's memory is a fatally fragile existence doomed to extinction. Photographs, those imperfect little two-dimensional abstractions of long-dead realities, may simply be the best alternative we have...

Ken

RobC · May 22, 2015

Ken Nadvornick said:
Photographs, those imperfect little two-dimensional abstractions of long-dead realities, may simply be the best alternative we have...

Ken

Why do you want to be remembered?

Susan Sontag

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