Customer Reviews

On Photography

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

I am not a big fan of artistic criticism: I often find it pretentious and prolix. Sontag's essays can be described by these adjectives, at least on first reading. I suspected that critics are inherently like this (until I read Nancy Newhall), but I reread "On Photography" recently and have changed my opinion slightly: critics can be pretentious, but that is the nature of the task.

Sontag's essays are complex and thought provoking, eliciting a flow of ideas that one needs to think about deeply: what is a photograph and how does it convey its message? How much truth does a photograph contain, if any? The answer to that last question is much more difficult with the advent of digital photography and the wonderous (or evil, depending on your viewpoint) manipulations that can be done in the digital darkroom.

An issue that isn't discussed in great depth is the relationship between candid snapshots on one end of the spectrum, and fine art photography on the other; Photography as a medium for artistic expression vs. a medium for recording reality (or unreality or surreality).

The book is not trivially understood: references to philosophy and art history abound, and a dictionary of philosophy and art is almost a requisite. You should also expect to read this a couple of times to get the full impact: do not make your judgement based on a first reading.

This is the ONE book I always tell my students to read, not because they will be better photographers but, because they will be better equipped to see and understand how photographic images have influenced our culture and our self- images.

This is now more important than ever in the age of digital photography and images which are crafted to manipulate our feelings and decisions to consume, vote, love and even whether we like ourselves.

It establishes a consciousness about the subject which is incisive and memorable. It is a brilliant work and a great contribution.

Sontag is first and formost a philosopher. Her book is a series of essays that were first published in New York Magazine and later compiled for this book. As such, each essay is distinct and does segue easily to the next. Be prepared with these tools when digesting On Photography: a French dictionary, an English dictionary and a philosophy reference book i.e. Bloom's Closing of the American Mind. From the first essay, In Plato's Cave and onto through to Through Images Darkly (an analysis of Diane Arbus' work), once must be familiar with Plato's Republic and know what Arbus' photos look like. Be prepared to spend time with this book, it is well worth it!

I opened this book very neutrally--I had never heard anything about Susan Sontag except her name, in a preface to an Annie Leibovitz book. I still can't believe some of the things I read. Sontag mentions in the foreword that she has an "obsession" with photography. I would argue that she has an obsession with resenting photography.
She begins by comparing a camera to a gun and the act of taking a picture to rape. To a certain point, I can understand this--being photographed is a very self-conscious experience. But somehow, I think rape victims would laugh at this comparision. Self-consciousness is not exactly rape. Also, she seems to believe that all photography is taken completely without the consent of the subject(s); they are innocent victims being raped by guns. The last time I checked, most of the photographers she mentions (Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Edward Weston, Julia Margaret Cameron) took pictures only with express permission, and many (Eugene Atget, Ansel Adams, etc.) did not take pictures of people at all. Almost all good pictures, with the exception of Henri Cartier-Bresson type photography, requires tacit consent between photographer and subject.
Sontag's resentment seems to come mostly from the resentment generated by photography's replacement of writing in description. Specifically, she says that whereas photograpy "steals" the pain of others, writing uses only one's own pain. This is funny, since I remember reading about how Jane Austen's neighbors complained because their lives were being stolen for her books. Ever since the art of storytelling began writers and storytellers have been "stealing" other people's lives, their pain, etc. Fitzgerald used Zelda's insanity just as David Bailey photographed Marie Helvin. I believe that the art of writing and the art of photography are incredibly similar, and Sontag sounds very sour grapes. How is Strand's photographing the famous "Blind Woman" different from Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood?"
My biggest objection to Sontag, however, is her lack of either proof or explanation. She simply states opinions as if they were facts, and then stops. For example, according to Sontag, Weston is now regarded as antiquated and cliche. Really? Somehow I thought, considering the worth of his work, his exhibitions in museums, and the wealth of books devoted to him, as well as his inclusion in every basic photography class, that he was still very highly regarded. I'm sure that Sontag regards him as antiquated and cliche, but this is very different from the "everyone" she generally to be present and in full agreement with her.
Sontag also concentrates exclusively on one genre and attacks photography as a whole through that genre. Diane Arbus's photos are apparently taking horrible advantage of everyone pictured in them, and are freakish visions of a bleak world--therefore all photographs in the world are taking horrible advantage and are freakish visions of a bleak world. I can understand why some people find Arbus's photos terribly offensive, but I think only the extremely deluded would use her as representative of all photography.
One last aspect of Sontag's book, which I found the most offensive, is her assumption that a picture is stealing the pain of others and, in a sense, profiting from it artistically. This is despite her inclusion in her "Anthology of Quotations" of Richard Avedon's interview where he stated that the pictures he took of other people were more about him than about them. Everyone who has ever practiced photography with any passion can testify to the truth of this statement, hence my conclusion that Sontag has probably never really picked up a camera. Look at Avedon's pictures of a tortured Marilyn Monroe, and then read Arthur Miller's "After the Fall," which describes a tortured and pill-popping Marilyn Monroe. There is very little difference, except that in Avedon's pictures Monroe still retains some amount of dignity, whereas in Miller's play she becomes a demon of hysteria and cruelty. In the end, although I am both a photographer and a writer, I would say that writing has ten times the power of misrepresentation and "stealing the pain of others" than does photography.

Every so often one reads about tourists who are found strangled with the strap of their cameras in some obscure alleyway of Bangkok or Manila. Or New York. The camera is invariably missing, of course, and one would wish that the perpetrator had left a message on the body explaining the crime. A copy of ON PHOTOGRAPHY placed on the victim's chest would splendidly communicate most of the motivations for such murders.

People who possess even the rudiments of sensitivity become aware, without any necessary explanations, that holding a camera is not unlike holding a gun. It conveys upon the possesor raw power, whether it is wanted or not. How this power is used may result on the strangulation of the photographer.

This book, in a much more elegant way, is about such things. Its essays should be included as part of the operating instructions of all cameras sold in the US. I think that even the users of disposable cameras should read this book because it will not only improve their camera work, but their souls, also.

There are some shortcomings to the book. For one it does not have an index, a sin I find hard to forgive in any book of this nature. Nor does it contain any pictures, a most disconcerting fact. For as early as page 7 we are told that David Octavius Hill and Julia Margaret Cameron were early masters of photography. Uh? Never heard of them. And so, as part of this excercise in gaining Kultur, I was forced to purchase Naomi Rosenblum's A WORLD HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY (available through Amazon[.com], naturally), a joyous addition to my book collection, and one in which I was able to find almost all of Ms. Sontag's references to photographers. Cameron and Hill were, of course, prominently discussed and their work carefully reproduced in Ms. Rosenblum's book. The two books in combination are wonderful; but, if on a budget, by all means consider that ON PHOTOGRAPHY is marvelous all by it self.

Sontag Susan's On Photography is quite an interesting book. I will say loud and clear that this is not for all, and would suggest reading the 1 ratings here before you move on to purchase this book - it does depend a lot on your character. I do see truth in these ratings and understand them 100%. I personally see another side as well, respecting all regarding this book. It is not typical.

I had initially picked up this book for graduate studies in photography, but voluntarily as a secondary resource. Now - as someone whom has been interested in and working with photography for 23 years now I found this book to be quite "fresh". It takes you by surprise and Sontag presents a lot of extreme ideas that will not be useful, I feel, to the average citizen looking at developing their photographic eye. So, if you just picked up a new digital slr and want to take better portraits, or read about photoshop, this is not the book you are after.

If however you have 30ish book on your shelf (on photography) and enjoy reading artists views that may be philosophical, and want something off the wall compared to most of the books you will find - you may now be in a zone of interest. Her writing will make you stop, think, question, and refute. Is this not fine for literature to do? And when you think of some of her "strong" metaphors being presented you may even be able to find some truth if you think long enough.

If you are interested in the "world" of photography and want to read about uncommon hidden games of photography - get the book, and beware that it may cause queasy feelings from time to time. I personally think this is effective literature. And as of Dec 2010 a price of $10 for the curious mind - it is hard to go wrong. At minimum a interesting artifact to discuss.

I selected this book as a required reading for next semester's Contemporary Trends class, even though the collection was published over 30 years ago. Part of what makes Sontag's essays such a compelling read is how the concepts can be applied to photography in the digital (filmless, Photoshopped, sharing / authoring) environment. Not as much has changed as the reader might initially think, and Sontag's concepts still have reach. Consider her chapter on "Melancholy Objects" and note how her claims about the Surreal nature of photography prove the redundancy of many digital manipulations. Especially for the aspiring photographer and the sensitive viewer of photographs, Sontag's book provides good grounding in a noisy age.

This is a collection of six essays on the nature and practitioners of photography which were written by Susan Sontag in the early `70's. Sontag herself could be wildly polarizing; the responses to this book, grouped in the 5-star and 1-star range reflect that. At the risk of appearing Clintonesque, I will "triangulate."

The bad is really bad. Sontag can do a wild rant with the best of them, straying far from any underlying logic. "Like guns and cars, cameras are fantasy-machines whose use is addictive." "...like a man's fantasy of having a gun, knife or tool between his legs. Still, there is something predatory in the act of taking a picture. To photograph people is to violate them..."(!) "Just as the camera is a sublimation of the gun, to photograph someone is a sublimated murder- a soft murder, appropriate to a sad, frightened time." What!! Why on earth don't the 5-star reviewers call her hand on this s...? Why is it that the vast majority of people WANT to have their photograph taken? A death wish?

Like another reviewer, I wonder if she has ever taken a picture. Certainly no more than a "snapshot" that she routinely denounces "tourists" and other "low-brows" of taking. Consider the following: "Nothing could be more unlike the self-sacrificial travail of an artist like Proust than the effortlessness of picture-taking, which must be the sole activity resulting in accredited works of art in which a single movement, a touch of the finger, produces a complete work...One can't imagine the Overture to Remembrance of Things Past: Volume I - Swann's Way & Within a Budding Grove (Vintage) ending with the narrator coming across a snapshot of the parish church at Combray and the savoring of that visual crumb, instead of the taste of the humble madeleine dipped in tea, making an entire part of his past spring into view." The "s-word" starts with "m" in French. Yes, tastes and smells can evoke memories, but photographs may be the most powerful in terms of stimulating some long-dormant neurons. Does any photographer compose? Reject? Repeat? Even spend hours developing their work? (at least in the pre-digital age when she wrote this). She mentions Edward Steichen's photography exhibit, The Family of Man The Greatest Photographic Exhibition of All Time but does not discuss the last photograph, the one taken by perhaps the best photographer of the 20th Century, W. Eugene Smith. He had been badly wounded as a photographer in the Second World War, and struggled to compose the "perfect picture" for his post convalescent career. It is the memorable one of two small children, walking up, out of the woods, into the sunlight. Just a snapshot? Sontag moves from her brief discussion of the optimism of The Family of Man to the `70's icon, the disturbing Diane Arbus, and spends much more time on her bleak vision, and her ultimate suicide.

No question, Sontag has a brilliant intellect, and her erudition is impressive, ranging over the fields of art and literature. She even devotes almost a page to one of my favorite, and more obscure photography books, Bob Adelman's 1960's portrait of Wilcox County, Alabama, entitled Down home, Camden, Alabama (A Prairie House book). Even though somewhat positive, she still insists that it "descends" from Walter Evans Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (Penguin Modern Classics), and that the accompanying prose of James Agee is "sometimes overwritten." An elitist Manhattan outlook to the core.

I started this review with the concept that I should "triangulate" the extreme reviews, which should mean that this is a 3-star. Yet in writing it I've realized that someone of Sontag's intelligence should have UNDERSTOOD her subject far better before denouncing it and its practitioners. Thus, the triangle collapses to only a short line with a star at each end: 2-stars.

Sontag's On Photography was published in 1977. It includes six named sections which each tackle a slightly different subject. The sections were published independently as magazine articles years before the monograph was assembled--and this is plainly evident (which is my main 'complaint' about the text). The book does not feel or read like a book. It reads like a collection of six disparate essays that have been lightly edited for packaging as a book. The sections work OK as essays, but they fail somewhat as a monograph. For example, Sontag makes numerous assertions about photography which are stated as fact but not supported by any documentary evidence. While this is acceptable in an essay, in a monograph of this sort one would expect more academic rigor. Finally, each essay was clearly intended as an atomic piece and their collection in the book results in a large amount of re-hash of basic ideas at the start of every new section, as well as a very choppy flow between sections.

The book is dated (which is entirely understandable--but true none-the-less). Sontag makes a single fleeting reference to digital photography as a quirky alternate method of capturing images. The text's discussion on the pervasive nature of cameras assumes the pinnacle of technology to be the Kodak Brownie. While this was arguably once true, photography has been so changed by digital capture and truly pervasive cameras (think cell phones, etc.) that many of the ideas of the text are only partially developed by today's standards. Additionally, Sontag's insistence that photography is the accidental but obvious champion of the Surrealist takeover of the arts is also dated. Sontag's insistence on using 'big' words and complicated sentences to describe simple things is also somewhat irritating; the tone is unmistakably that of 1970s/1980s critical academia.

Having said that, the book occupies a fairly unique niche in the history of thinking about photography. As other reviews have noted, the subject material is (ahem) well focused on the topic and delivers interesting insight into various aspects of photography. It is unfortunate that Sontag did not more-fully edit the source materials into a cohesive text and at least attempt to look forward to a time when technological changes in process and artistic developments in taste could perhaps be different than the norms of the late 1970s.

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.