Quotations by Susan Sontag, American Author, Born January 16, 1933. The camera's twin capacities, to subjectivise reality and to objectify it, ideally serve these needs as strengthen them. Susan Sontag (January 16, 1933 – December 28, 2004) was an American writer, filmmaker, philosopher, teacher, and political activist. SUSAN SONTAG was an American writer and filmmaker, professor, literary icon, and political activist. ― Susan Sontag, On Photography. It is the revenge of the intellect upon the world. When we are afraid, we shoot. -- Newsweek " On Photography is to my mind the most original and illuminating study of the subject." Susan Sontag Quotes - BrainyQuote What is the most beautiful in virile men is something feminine; what is most beautiful in feminine women is something masculine. In "America, Seen Through Photographs, Darkly," Sontag looks specifically at photography's place in American culture and history. The narrowing of free political choice to free economic consumption requires the unlimited production and consumption of images.”, “Most of Arbus's work lies within the Warhol aesthetic, that is, defines itself in relation to the twin poles of boringness and freakishness; but it doesn't have the Warhol style. from the College of the University of Chicago and did graduate work in Once one has seen such images, one has started down the road of seeing more - and more. Beginning with the publication of her 1964 essay "Notes on 'Camp'", Sontag became an international cultural and intellectual celebrity. 'RealVideo.RealVideo(tm) ActiveX Control (32-bit)', Arbus had neither Warhol's narcissism and genius for publicity nor the self-protective blandness with which he insulates himself from the freaky nor his sentimentality. 'RealPlayer'], ['rmockx.RealPlayer G2 Control', 1933 - US writer and critic. And it needs to gather unlimited amounts of information, the better to exploit natural resources, increase productivity, keep order, make war, give jobs to bureaucrats. Welcome back. Todas las fotografías son memento morí. To take a photo is to give the subject a moment of fame. Industrial societies turn their citizens into image-junkies; it is the most irresistible form of mental pollution.”, 7. “To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed.”, 6. “To collect photographs is to collect the world.”, 5. “The painter constructs, the photographer discloses.”, 4. “Photographs are a way of imprisoning reality…One can’t possess reality, one can possess images–one can’t possess the present but one can possess the past.”, 3. “Using a camera appeases the anxiety which the work-driven feel about not working when they are on vacation.”, 2. “Photography makes us feel that the world is more available than it really is.”, 1. “Photographs were seen as a way of giving information to people who do not take easily to reading.”, Bonus. “When Cartier-Bresson goes to China, he shows that there are people in China, and that they are Chinese.”, Bring out the blue skies that are hidden in your photos with one slider, Selectively sharpen the edges in your photos for a more professional look, Stretch your panoramas to the corners to remove the need for cropping, Expert Photography © 2011-2020. The sense of the unattainable that can be evoked by photographs feeds directly into the erotic, “To collect photographs is to collect the world.”, “A way of certifying experience, taking photographs is also a way of refusing it—by limiting experience to a search for the photogenic, by converting experience into an image, a souvenir. It is unlikey that Warhol, who comes from a working-class family, ever felt any ambivalence toward success which afflicted the children of the Jewish upper middle classes in the 1960s. Her best known works include On Photography, Against Interpretation Susan Sontag was born in Manhattan in 1933 and studied at the universities of Chicago, Harvard and Oxford. Susan Sontag — 1964 In The Evergreen Review, Dec. I find her work lacking in academic rigour, and very prone to deeply personal judgment – in fact, she and Roland Barthes have much in common on these two counts. She mostly wrote essays, but also published novels; she published her first major work, the essay "Notes on 'Camp'", in 1964. Just as a camera is a sublimation of the gun, to photograph someone is a subliminal murder -- a soft murder, appropriate to a sad, frightened time." Guns have metamorphosed into cameras in this earnest comedy, the ecology safari, because nature has ceased to be what it always had been - what people needed protection from. “Photographs were seen as a way of giving information to people who do not take easily to reading.” There is a reason why this is a mandatory read for photography students. The power of photography --and its centrality in present aesthetic concerns-- is that it confirms both ideas of art. Images anesthetize.”. Quite frankly, I am not a fan of Susan Sontag. Now nature - tamed, endangered, mortal - needs to be protected from people. Identifying with her subjects, Sontag remains sensitive to the highly emotional process which is being photographed. Collection of sourced quotations from Illness as Metaphor (1978) by Susan Sontag. 'RealPlayer'], Alternative process photography is a whole universe filled with interesting printing methods and techniques. Read inspirational, motivational, funny and famous quotes by Susan Sontag. tags: art , obsolete , photography. Jul 21, 2016 - Explore elizabeth beyer's board "SUSAN SONTAG", followed by 229 people on Pinterest. More Susan Sontag Quotes Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art. Just as a camera is a sublimation of the gun, to photograph someone is a subliminal murder - a soft murder, appropriate to a sad, frightened time.”, “Photographs are a way of imprisoning reality...One can't possess reality, one can possess images--one can't possess the present but one can possess the past.”, “The painter constructs, the photographer discloses.”, “Needing to have reality confirmed and experience enhanced by photographs is an aesthetic consumerism to which everyone is now addicted. You can also select your interests for free access to our premium training: Susan Sontag’s On Photography is one of the best studies of photography that you can find. Susan Sontag was born in New York City on January 16, 1933. It delves into the idea of ‘transparency’, where photographers have eliminated the boundaries of art and are faced with the prospect of being free to capture. Adept of the joys of watching, connoisseur of empathy, the flâneur finds the world 'picturesque.”, “To suffer is one thing; another thing is living with the photographed images of suffering, which does not necessarily strengthen conscience and the ability to be compassionate. It just make me feel … not real, not authentic. Below, we have selected 12 quotes to inspire you and give a quick idea of what the book is about. Social change is replaced by a change in images. “On Photography is to my mind the most original and illuminating study of the subject.”—Calvin Trillin, The New Yorker . Analyzing their photos will teach you more…. To interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world—in order to set up a shadow precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time's relentless melt.”, “The photographer is an armed version of the solitary walker reconnoitering, stalking, cruising the urban inferno, the voyeuristic stroller who discovers the city as a landscape of voluptuous extremes. “Photography makes us feel that the world is more available than it really is.” 1. Enjoy the best Susan Sontag Quotes Page 2 at BrainyQuote. Las sociedades industriales transforman a sus ciudadanos en yonquis a las imágenes; es la forma más irresistible de contaminación mental.”, “To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed.”, “In the real world, something is happening and no one knows what is going to happen. Susan Sontag was an American writer and filmmaker, teacher and political activist, publishing her first major work, the essay "Notes on 'Camp' ", in 1964. Photographs state the innocence, the vulnerability of lives heading toward their own destruction, and this link between photography and death haunts all photographs of people. The power of photography --and its centrality in present aesthetic concerns-- is that it confirms both ideas of art. All Rights Reserved. Just as a camera is a sublimation of the gun, to photograph someone is a subliminal murder - a soft murder, appropriate to a sad, frightened time.” ― Susan Sontag, On Photography tags: cameras, photography 561 likes Product links on ExpertPhotography are referral links. [Note: ExpertPhotography is supported by readers. Her non-fiction works include Against Interpretation, On Photography, Illness as Metaphor, AIDS and its Metaphors and Regarding the Pain of Others. Photographs turn the past into an object of … Susan Sontag's quotes in this page. See more ideas about Susan sontag, Susan, Anne leibovitz. Ahora piensen —o más bien sientan, intuyan— qué hay más allá, cómo debe de ser la realidad si ésta es su apariencia».”, “La necesidad de confirmar la realidad y dilatar la experiencia mediante fotografías es un consumismo estético al que hoy todos son adictos. But when we are nostalgic, we take pictures.”, “Despite the illusion of giving understanding, what seeing through photographs really invites is an acquisitive relation to the world that nourishes aesthetic awareness and promotes emotional detachment.”, “Photographs shock insofar as they show something novel.”, “Algo feo o grotesco puede ser conmovedor porque la atención del fotógrafo lo ha dignificado. Share with your friends the best quotes from Illness as Metaphor. She received her B.A. "After Sontag, photography must be written about not only as a force in the arts, but as one that is increasingly powerful in the nature and destiny of our global society." Susan Sontag was born in New York City on January 16, 1933, grew up in Tucson, Arizona, and attended high school in Los Angeles. See how it all works here. See more ideas about susan sontag, susan, susan sontag quotes. Photography is the inventory of mortality. Algo bello puede ser objeto de sentimientos tristes porque ha envejecido o decaído o ya no existe. To someone raised as a Catholic, like Warhol (and virtually everyone in his gang), a fascination with evil comes much more genuinely than it does to someone from a Jewish background. – Susan Sontag Rate it: For those who live neither with religious consolations about death nor with a sense of death (or of anything else) as natural, death is the obscene mystery, the ultimate affront, the thing that cannot be controlled. Even more. But the way in which photography renders art obsolete is, in the long run, stronger.”, “A photograph is both a pseudo-presence and a token of absence. On Photography began with a single essay in which Susan Sontag wanted to explore some of the problems, both aesthetic and moral, presented by the omnipresence of photographed images in … Mar 20, 2013 - Explore Marjan Lambrecht's board "Susan Sontag", followed by 160 people on Pinterest. “To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them that they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed. “Life is not about significant details, illuminated a flash, fixed forever. A commentary on how images shape our world and affect the societies we are part of. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. Susan Sontag (/ˈsɒntæɡ/; January 16, 1933 – December 28, 2004) was an American writer, filmmaker, philosopher, teacher, and political activist. Her Dantesque vision of the city (and the suburbs) has no reserves of irony. Susan Sontag – Quotes from ‘On Photography’. 'rmocx.RealPlayer G2 Control.1', On Photography is a 1977 collection of essays by Susan Sontag. It’s not because I’m not photogenic, which I ‘m not. 'RealPlayer.RealPlayer(tm) ActiveX Control (32-bit)', — Ed. Need more info? I applaud the fact that they ‘take a view’, rather than sitting on the sidelines. 21 likes. Precisamente porque seccionan un momento y lo congelan, todas las fotografías atestiguan la despiadada disolución del tiempo.”, “To photograph people is to violate them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed.”, “La sabiduría esencial de la imagen fotográfica afirma: «Ésa es la superficie. Refresh and try again. — Susan Sontag, buch On Photography "The Image-World", p. 161 On Photography (1977) Kontext: Reality has come to seem more and more like what we are shown by cameras. Although the activities of some photographers conform to the traditional notion of a fine art, the activity of exceptionally talented individuals producing discrete objects that have value in themselves, form the beginning photography has also lent itself to that notion of art which says that art is obsolete. Here are 10 amazing alternative photography processes for you to try.…, Most of us are wondering how to sell our images. The true collector is in the grip not of what is collected but of collecting. Error rating book. Susan Sontag (2011). Here are 3 of the 9 tweaks we uncover in this 9 minute video: ['rmockx.RealPlayer G2 Control', 'RealPlayer.RealPlayer(tm) ActiveX Control (32-bit)', Industrial societies turn their citizens into image-junkies; it is the most irresistible form of mental pollution.”, “to take a photograph is to participate in another person's mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Susan Sontag Collecting expresses a free-floating desire that attaches and re-attaches itself—it is a succession of desires. Privacy Policy Terms of Use. “On Photography”, p.16, Macmillan 40 Copy quote 10 percent of any population is cruel, no matter what, and 10 percent is merciful, no matter what, and the remaining 80 percent can be moved in either direction. “A capitalist society requires a culture based on images. Her book is a collection of six essays that explore photography in the deepest of manners. ], 12. “Photographs cannot create a moral position, but they can reinforce one—and can help build a nascent one.”, 11. “To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability… All photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.”, 10. “…there is something predatory in the act of taking a picture. To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them that they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed.”, 9. “Photography is become one of the principle devices for experiencing something, for giving an appearance of  participation.”, 8. “Needing to have reality confirmed and experience enhanced by photographs is an aesthetic consumerism to which everyone is now addicted. If you use one of these and buy something, we make a little bit of money. Compared with Warhol, Arbus seems strikingly vulnerable, innocent--and certainly more pessimistic. Photography is not an art like, say, painting and poetry. It originally appeared as a series of essays in the New York Review of Books between 1973 and 1977. Share with your friends. Hacer una fotografía es participar de la mortalidad, vulnerabilidad, mutabilidad de otra persona o cosa. 'rmocx.RealPlayer G2 Control.1', Her best known works include On Photography, Against Interpretation Out of photography, one can make passport pictures, weather photographs, pornographic pictures, X-rays, wedding pictures, and Atget's Paris. Travel becomes a strategy for accumulating photographs.”, “The photographer is now charging real beasts, beleaguered and too rare to kill. And then we stumble across photographs for which a buyer was happy to pay millions…, One of the best ways to improve your photography is to look at the work of accomplished photographers. It can also corrupt them. The production of images also furnishes a ruling ideology. In the image-world, it has happened, and it will forever happen in that way.”, “Cameras miniaturize experience, transform history into spectacle.”, “Recientemente la fotografía se ha transformado en una diversión casi tan cultivada como el sexo y el baile, lo cual significa que la fotografía, como toda forma artística de masas, no es cultivada como tal por la mayoría. Although photography generates works that can be called art --it requires subjectivity, it can lie, it gives aesthetic pleasure-- photography is not, to begin with, an art form at all. Out of language, one can make scientific discourse, bureaucratic memoranda, love letters, grocery lists, and Balzac's Paris. Susan Sontag was an American writer and filmmaker, teacher and political activist, publishing her first major work, the essay "Notes on 'Camp' ", in 1964. On Photography by Susan Sontag I don’t like being photographed. Cameras define reality in the two ways essential to the workings of an advanced industrial society: as a spectacle (for masses) and as an object of surveillance (for rulers). Like language, it is a medium in which works of art (among other things) are made. Images transfix. It is common now for people to insist upon their Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. She puts forth the idea that a photograph is meant to assign importance to a person, an event, or a moment in time. It needs to furnish vast amounts of entertainment in order to stimulate buying and anesthetise the injuries of class, race, and sex. - Susan Sontag - "Plato's Cave", (1977) , On Photography by Susan Sontag , ISBN: 0385267061 This book is available from Amazon.com A photograph that brings news of some unsuspected zone of misery cannot make a dent in public opinion unless there is an appropriate context of feeling and attitude. Like a wood fire in a room, photographs—especially those of people, of distant landscapes and faraway cities, of the vanished past—are incitements to reverie. ... ''Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art. The photograph in a book is, obviously, the image of an image. 'RealVideo.RealVideo(tm) ActiveX Control (32-bit)', Es sobre todo un rito social, una protección contra la ansiedad y un instrumento de poder.”, “Una fotografía es a la vez una pseudopresencia y un signo de ausencia.”, “When Cartier-Bresson goes to China, he shows that there are people in China, and that they are Chinese.”, “If there can be a better way for the real world to include the one of images, it will require an ecology not only of real things but of images as well.”, “Photographs cannot create a moral position, but they can reinforce one-and can help build a nascent one.”. But the way in which photography renders art obsolete is, in the long run, stronger.”. Although much of Arbus's material is the same as that depicted in, say, Warhol's, “But the very question of whether photography is or is not an art is essentially a misleading one. The freedom to consume a plurality of images and goods is equated with freedom itself. Not authentic stimulate buying and anesthetise the injuries of class, race, and sex collected but of Collecting idea... You and give a quick idea of what is collected but of...., Against Interpretation collection of sourced quotations from Illness as Metaphor ( 1978 ) by Susan Sontag was in. -- is that it confirms both ideas of art ( among other things ) are made `` Interpretation the... Sontag quotes Page 2 at BrainyQuote upon art, say, painting and poetry equated. Love letters, grocery lists, and Balzac 's Paris give the subject. illuminating study of the upon... Goods is equated with freedom itself by a change in images wondering how to sell images! 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