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Summary:
Winner of the National Book Critics' Circle Award for Criticism.
One of the most highly regarded books of its kind, On Photography first appeared in 1977 and is described by its author as “a progress of essays about the meaning and career of photographs.” It begins with the famous “In Plato’s Cave”essay, then offers five other prose meditations on this topic, and concludes with a fascinating and far-reaching “Brief Anthology of Quotations.”
Customer Reviews:
Average Customer Rating:
Man-hating garbage
Customer Rating:
One line on page 14 says: "The camera/gun does not kill, so the ominous metaphor seems to be all bluff - like a man's fantasy of having a gun, knife or tool between his legs.
Wow, I've never had one of these fantasies so I guess I must not be a real man.
Sontag
Customer Rating:
Sontag
noesis between a critique of bias accompaniment modernity into seventies intellect you all in a thought prescribed reasoning from a photographer's reference she and Arbus grotesque "single village" absurd family arranged encumbered a transparent place twins are girls women and dwarves she conjures Sylvia and Jong each line cast another memorial made
bordered thoughts in earnest image as object a search "timeless beauty" the notion of character study--history its colleagues fantastic wealth and Weston the modern lover understands what is new then she and hisher newness evidential master's pieces decay something edible hidden apparent tangible counterparts decisive like Bresson ghostly layers of Nadar
she collects evokes collecting the world Genet and his criminals possessing their pasts for posits--her translations and debut help from Proust quoted friends never met or maybe now in death regarded as part cannon of thinkers makers in need included heroes and heroines "an ethics in seeing" a cave of truths she is evident in explanation replenished possessing past to a defining present
Easy to criticize this book now, but it was the progenitor of the criticism of photography.
Customer Rating:
These essays helped the scholarship of photography get a fair shake. Even the publication of them in a book was a noteworthy entry in the history of photography. It is easy to look back now and criticize this book, which is basically an intellectual discipline in its infancy, but it remains important. I actually still enjoy the writing, which I find warm and inviting - not because of the tone, but because of the author's sense of adventure. It might be closer to a flight of fancy than a disciplined philosophy, but you have to start somewhere. I still think this is one of the best, most accessible reads on the subject.
ill-Timed and Irrelevant
Customer Rating:
I originally purchased this book based on the extraordinary, glowing reviews - you know, the same ones on the back cover: "book of great importance and originality", "the most original and illuminating study of the subject", "raises important and exciting questions" etc. etc. etc.
Since buying it, I've attempted to plow through it at least 4-5 times, managing to get about 3/4ths through. And I LIKE philosophy and alternative thinking! The problem I think, is that much of what Sontag writes about photography is simply wrong. That leaves out what is self-contradictory, such as saying (as I would characterize it) in one place that modern and documentary photography is manipulative and exploitive, while elsewhere saying it is meaningless (at one point saying a photo of a dwarf is, after all, just a dwarf).
Photography as an art form - even without considering digital photography and up-to-date image manipulation and creation - is, like any art form, foremost about point of view. That's a commonplace notion that taught in photography texts and mentioned in countless art books. Sontag starts with this and points some of them out - the idealism of early photographers imitating painterly scenes, for example.
No problem so far. Where Sontag strays, however, is in assigning personal, cultural, and political motive to the points of view taken, and casting them in the worst possible light. So in her view the photographer becomes "aggrandized" as a "self-expressing ego", his work (put in the most over-wrought fashion) "a heroic copulation with the material world"! She even goes after the motives of snapshooting tourists, characterizing picture-taking as an anxiety-driven imitation of work! This sort of blue-in-the-face prose reminds me of nothing so much as conspiracy theorist and expose writing.
The book was ill-timed because it came just as the world was diving full-on into the internet, in the process transforming photography again. All of a sudden, photos, videos, graphics, and derivative and creative versions of them are embedded into everything we do, at every level of art and expertise, from every direction, and seemingly from everyone. In this world, the oppressive and heavy-handed motives Sontag ascribes to photographers and those who use images in evil ways are swept into irrelevance. It's not that such things don't exist - witness the controversy over the Time magazine cover shot of O.J. Simpson, as a small example - it's that when incidents like this are one among millions or billions in a world where people create their own connections, communications, and communities, and the old mainstream press and book publishing world has lost its position in the world, much of what she argues ceases to have importance even if you accept it.
My recommendation is to pass On Photography by. Chances are you won't get through it anyway.
On Photography
Customer Rating:
On Photography by Susan Sontag. Arrived within time. Is in great condition. And I'm delighted once again with the service. I cannot fault any aspect of it. So 99% and thanks.
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