Susan Sontag (/ ˈ s ɒ n t æ ɡ /; January 16, 1933 – December 28, 2004) was an American writer, filmmaker, philosopher, teacher, and political activist. It is her emotional responses to the shallowest possible reading of photographs. " edited by The important thing to remember is that Plato wanted to banish the artists and he wanted to do this for a very good reason. Susan Sontag's incredible, penetrating critique of photography doesn't just cast into doubt the value of the activity of taking a photograph, but it posits some of the irrevocable changes that the advent of this technology has had on our world and how we experience it. ENTERTAINMENT, SPORTS & CELEBRITY. However, fame didn’t banish lifelong anxieties heightened by an assassination attempt that left him so fearful he bought bulletproof eyeglasses. etc." John Berger and Susan Sontag speak about story telling and about the ethic of photography. But at the same time, Sontag is genius enough to avoid condemning photography. Me encanta como escribe Susan. Both times, the author and Prince came together through serendipity to create playfully expressive images that came to represent the singer’s “unorthodox ability to truly live life in the moment.” Other encounters took place while Prince was performing at Paisley Park, his Minneapolis studio, or at venues in LA, New York, Tokyo, and London. RELEASE DATE: April 21, 2020. When anything can be photographed and photography has destroyed the boundaries and definitions of art, a viewer can approach a photograph freely with no expectations of discovering what it means. Geoffrey Movius: In one of your recent essays on photography in The New York Review of Books, you write that "no work of imaginative literature can have the same authenticity as a document," and that there is "a rancorous suspicion in … It isn't intellectual, either. Alquien que ya lo haya leido y pueda compartirme su opinion ? It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds! After the pop successes, Gopnik writes, Warhol’s life was shaped by a consuming desire “to climb back onto that cutting edge,” which led him to make experimental films, launch Interview magazine, and promote the Velvet Underground. Her books include Against Interpretation, On Photography, Illness as Metaphor, and The Volcano Lover. Susan Sontag has returned photography to the cockpit of discussion it occupied when the exact mechanical image loomed as a threat to the person, to art, to the very relationship between images and reality. But the meaning of value itself can be altered ", The first 2-3 essays of the book are just astonishing. influencers in the know since 1933. by While fascinating, 'every sentence contains a thought' is not as fun as it sounds. 1970) world. We’d love your help. ‧ Pre-publication book reviews and features keeping readers and industry First published in 1973, this is a study of the force of photographic images which are continually inserted between experience and reality. John Berger and Susan Sontag speak about story telling and about the ethic of photography. For Plato what we needed to do was get closer to reality, not further away from it. As I read Sontag’s essays, I feel like I can imagine her fiercely arguing for the many idea. ART & PHOTOGRAPHY, by This is a classic book of essays about how photography reveals so much about society, politics, history, and our attitudes towards preserving the image and the potential "truth" inherent in a photograph. With the cooperation of the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, the author serves up fresh details about almost every aspect of Warhol’s life in an immensely enjoyable book that blends snappy writing with careful exegeses of the artist’s influences and techniques. I picked this book up at a library booksale about 6 months ago, the first thing that popped out to me when I opened it up was a couple of Kodak Photo's from 1976....about 6 years before I was even born, and a bus schedule card for the same year....for Atlanta/Macon Georgia..... An interesting book about the art of photography. Anyone interested in the social roles of photography will … Susan Sontag's incredible, penetrating critique of photography doesn't just cast into doubt the value of the activity of taking a photograph, but it posits some of the irrevocable changes that the advent of this technology has had on our world and how we experience it. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. I'm giving it four stars not for the content itself, but for the quality of thinking I did while reading. See all 3 questions about On Photography…, The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace: A History of Space from Dante to the Internet, Forty-one False Starts: Essays on Artists and Writers, Discover the many benefits of hiring a photo booth, 36 of the Most Anticipated Mysteries and Thrillers of 2021. But levelling down, Arbus-like, is also "lowering the threshhold of what is terrible," as much modern art does, as Surrealism does systematically: "all subjects are merely objets trouvÉs." Trouble signing in? It isn't even about photography, it is about Susan Sontag consistently misunderstanding photographs. All future discussion or analysis of the role of photography in the affluent mass-media societies are now bound to begin with her book.” ―John Berger “Not many photographs are worth a thousand of [Susan Sontag's] words.” ―Robert Hughes, Time To Plato the world we live in isn’t really the real world – the real world is a world we cannot have access to, the real world is where things never die, things remain the same and don’t change. Susan Sontag was born in New York City on January 16, 1933. Review: The Panasonic FZ1000 II combines versatility and value review May 11, 2020 at 13:00 The Panasonic FZ1000 II is a worthy successor to the company's first large-sensor, long-zoom bridge camera, and a value-conscious rival to the popular Sony RX10-series. Susan Sontag starts her book on photography with a reference to Plato's cave, a dark prison only a few escape. Art Majors...creative photographers...media/communication people. These Are My New Year’s Reading Resolutions, He Wrote the (900-Page) Book on Andy Warhol. The Chinese want only complete, correct views, Sontag observes in a stunning windup. . The book also referenced some of the most iconic photographs of all time. As everything she wrote, Susan Sontag's book on photography is brilliant. This is Susan Sontag's second book on photography and, like the first, published in 1977, it … First published in 1977, it brings together a series of nonfiction pieces originally published in The New York Review of Books between 1973 and 1977. On Photography is a 1977 collection of essays by Susan Sontag. I recently read it while developing an aesthetics class that is … It is a line that Susan Sontag quotes toward the end of her 1977 essay collection, On Photography, about how photographs aestheticize misery. When anything can be photographed and photography has destroyed the boundaries and definitions of art, a viewer can approach a photograph freely with no expectations of discovering what it means. Sontag’s On Photography is one of the most quoted academic works on the subject of photograph, and generally comes up any time you’re having a serious discussion about photography. By placing a reference to Plato at the very beginning Sontag is telling us: 'I subscribe to the fundamental Platonic principles: the real world vs. the world of imitations. Sontag, Barthes, Benjamin, etc - many people have written about the semiotics and significance of photography as an "art." from the College of the University of Chicago and did graduate work in philosophy, literature, and theology at Harvard University and Saint Anne’s College, Oxford. Beauty falls, morality falls, as a standard; "photographic seeing" is the criterion, following "the idea that everything in the world could be made interesting through the camera." Susan Sontag. . —The New York Times Book Review “A book of great importance and originality . first met Prince in 1991 at a prearranged photo shoot. I've been perusing Sontag's journals for the past year or so, and her intellectual range leads you perilously near to pure jealousy, but then you concede her anomalous mind and simply admire it instead. It’s like there are questions and shadows in the periphery of my vision, and Susan Sontag puts both hands on my shoulders and turns me to face them head on. Images, that is. Just over 3 years ago (I am writing this at the end of 2020), I calculated that my pension fund was large enough to allow me to retire from professional work in the HR Department of a large IT company and, instead, declare myself a self-employed nature/wildlife photographer. This is one long string of "There is no such thing as a good or bad photograph, only more or less interesting ones", and that's an above average excerpt. Randee St. Nicholas This is a sequel to Sontag’s collection of essays On Photography. If anything, I found her work to be a bit too wordy and above my understanding when she made certain references to psychology, philosophy, and art history - as I said... the girls... Susan Sontag was born in New York City on January 16, 1933, grew up in Tucson, Arizona, and attended high school in Los Angeles. Sontag sees that photography, leveling everything, also beautifies. Susan Sontag thoughtfully explores the meaning of photos and photography in a series of essays published over years in "The New York Review of Books" in the 1970s. More than anything, she does what good critics do, she makes observations that open into still greater questions. Her writing is filled to the brim with critical thought, keen observations, and passion. The Diane Arbus section was the highlight of a boring collection, but I can't imagine the wikipedia entry on Arbus not rivalling Sontag's chapter. Susan Sontag explores photography as a cultural phenomenon and how it became this way, which leads you to question why people started taking photographs in the first place. © Copyright 2021 Kirkus Media LLC. In a vivid, close-set argument, she traces Whitman's theme, "the levelling of distinctions between the beautiful and the ugly, the important and the trivial," through Lewis Hine and Walker Evans to its "last sigh," the 1955 Family of Man exhibit, apex of "sentimental humanism"—and jumps to the toast of 1972, Diane Arbus, in whose world "everybody is an allen." I was fond of photography (no disappearance on that side!) The Diane Arbus section was the highlight of a boring collection, but I can't imagine the wikipedia entry on Arbus not rivalling Sontag's chapter. Good memories. Retrieve credentials.   Susan Sontag lives in a sparsely furnished five-room apartment on the top floor of a building in Chelsea on the west side of Manhattan. I approached On Photography expecting a sense of warmth and intellect that Maria Popova paints Susan Sontag with. “Every page of On Photographyraises important and exciting questions about its subject and raises them in the best way.”—The New York Times Book Review “On Photographyis to my mind the most original and illuminating study of the subject.”—Calvin Trillin, The New Yorker. ; All future discussion or analysis of the role of photography in the affluent mass-media societies are now bound to begin with her book.” —John Berger “Not many photographs are worth a thousand of [Susan Sontag's] words.” —Robert Hughes, Time Photography has been held up as a record of things "as they were" - ". by Penguin. So we are confronted with photography, reputedly realistic, as the art "that has best shown how to juxtapose the sewing machine and the umbrella," and with the photographer as "the voyeuristic stroller who discovers the city as a landscape of voluptuous extremes." Susan Sontag This was terribly interesting, but I think you needed to know a little more than Sontag explained to understand where she is coming from in all this. Q: Why is this book called "On Photography"? Very many ideas are perceived by society through images. A dazzling visual homage to a music icon gone too soon. Rising to equal that, Gopnik’s dictionary-sized biography has more than 7,000 endnotes in its e-book edition and drew on some 100,000 documents, including datebooks, tax returns, and letters to lovers and dealers. I completely understand what a privileged position I am in: doing what I have always dreamed of doing but with no pressure to make a living from it. Her thoughts give faux insights a bad name. Warhol exploded into view in his mid-40s with his pop art paintings of Campbell’s Soup cans and silkscreens of Elvis and Marilyn. I was studying photography at Rutgers and at SVA in NY, and one of my profs was particularly irked by these essays. Welcome back. by On Photography is a 1977 collection of essays by Susan Sontag. St. Nicholas (co-author: Whitney: Tribute to an Icon, 2012, etc.) If you love mysteries and thrillers, get ready for dozens... First published in 1973, this is a study of the force of photographic images which are continually inserted between experience and reality. 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.”, National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism (1977). So, I read. Reality vs. the cave.' Books—as many as fifteen thousand—and papers are everywhere. A fascinating, major work that will spark endless debates. Regarding the Pain of Others by Susan Sontag Hamish Hamilton £12.99, pp128. This collection of six lucid and invigorating essays, the most famous being "In Plato's Cave", make up a deep exploration of how the image has affected society. Sontag develops further the concept of 'transparency'. Her writing is filled to the brim with critical thought, keen observations, and passion. For example, her consideration of Diane Arbus at length maintains a level of contemplation and engagement - a recognition of both the potentially nihilistic and exploitative registers of Arbus's "freak" work and its power of imagination and sidewise cultural commentary - that falls by the wayside in the latter half of the book, where I felt lectured to in a more dogmatic mode. Dismemberments of reality. We’re glad you found a book that interests you! Benjamin Taylor, by On Photography is a collection of essays by American writer, academic, and activist Susan Sontag. Thank goodness I only listened to this. This was terribly interesting, but I think you needed to know a little more than Sontag explained to understand where she is coming from in all this. One in particular came about after the 1991 release of Prince’s Diamonds and Pearls album and led to the start of St. Nicholas’ career as a video director. A Los Angeles–based photographer pays tribute to a legendary musician with anecdotes and previously unseen images collected from their 25-year collaboration. She argues that photography has enshrined a superficiality of experience and contributed to the overvaluation of appearances to a point where image has (subconsciously) replaced reality as reality. RELEASE DATE: Nov. 11, 1977. “The dance between photographer and subject carried us away into hours of inspired photographs…and the beginning of a friendship that would last a lifetime.” In this book, the author fondly remembers their many professional encounters in the 25 years that followed. (The book has no illustrations; it assumes, reasonably enough, a common stock of photographic images.) Fujifilm X100V review: The most capable prime-lens compact camera, ever review Apr 8, 2020 at 13:55 We think Fujifilm's X100V is the best choice for a … Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of, Published Blake Gopnik Start by marking “On Photography” as Want to Read: Error rating book. Therefore, he needed to banish artists from his ideal society as they move us away from reality towards images - that is more shadows. Given that not one word of this book says sustains a single positive sentiment about cameras and their usage, why wouldn't it be called "Against Photography," or maybe "Photography is the Downfall of Human Kind.". Refresh and try again. Twists, turns, red herrings, the usual suspects: These books have it all...and more. “Most of Arbus's work lies within the Warhol aesthetic, that is, defines itself in relation to the twin … So, so bad, I'd rate it one star if people took one stars seriously. As I read Sontag’s essays, I feel like I can imagine her fiercely arguing for the many ideas and questions she posits. The readings of 50s and 60s Polaroid and Minol. This is not accidental. Magazine Subscribers (How to Find Your Reader Number). Like many people before me, I felt a certain dread the next time I tried to pick up my camera after reading this book. Although insightful in its interpretations of Warhol’s art, this biography is sure to make waves with its easily challenged claims that Warhol revealed himself early on “as a true rival of all the greats who had come before” and that he and Picasso may now occupy “the top peak of Parnassus, beside Michelangelo and Rembrandt and their fellow geniuses.” Any controversy will certainly befit a lodestar of 20th-century art who believed that “you weren’t doing much of anything as an artist if you weren’t questioning the most fundamental tenets of what art is and what artists can do.”, Categories: An Interview With Susan Sontag. Her books include Against Interpretation, On Photography, Illness as Metaphor, and The Volcano Lover. Despite not agreeing with it all, I have to love her for that. [tiempo ya que queria leer este libro. Sontag develops further the concept of 'transparency'. photographed by Susan Sontag has returned photography to the cockpit of discussion it occupied when the exact mechanical image loomed as a threat to the person, to … ―The New York Times Book Review “A book of great importance and originality . It originally appeared as a series of essays in the New York Review of Books between 1973 and 1977. So what does this entail for her analysis of photography? Susan Sontag. The book opens with "Plato's Cave," one of my favorite topics and certainly relevant to photography. Like most of her work, it caused a lot of controversy and gnashing of teeth. Susan Sontag (1933–2004) was a novelist, playwright, filmmaker, and one of the most influential critics of her generation. With an anthology of quotations (also shards of reality) from the unlikes of Daguerre, Man Ray, and a 1976 Minolta ad for further agitation. This seemingly limitless curiosity and brute capacity for knowledge is best exhibited in those first 2-3 essays (particularly the first two, which is why I keep saying "2-3"), and also remains less cloyingly didactic there. 1979 To photograph is to confer importance. I've been perusing Sontag's journals for the past year or so, and her intellectual range leads you perilously near to pure jealousy, but then you concede her anomalous mind and simply admire it instead. Something about "How could this woman who isn't a photographer write such bamsphemy!?! Like many people before me, I felt a certain dread the next time I tried to pick up my camera after reading this book. The book was very philosophical in places and made me look at photography in a completely different way. To Plato the world we live in isn’t really the real world – the real world is a world we cannot have access to, the real world is where things never die, things remain the same and don’t change. Sontag’s 1977 collection of essays entitled On Photography is perhaps the most prescient and influential book ever written on the medium. Susan Sontag's On Photography is a seminal and groundbreaking work on the subject. Susan Sontag (1933–2004) was a novelist, playwright, filmmaker, and one of the most influential critics of her generation. Susan Sontag Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Apr 1, 2011 - Photography - 224 pages 1 Review Winner of the National Book Critics' Circle Award for Criticis m. There is probably no subject that cannot be beautified; moreover, there is no way to suppress the tendency inherent in all photographs to accord value to their subjects. Sontag died in 2004 at the age of 71. The influence of the image on society is enormous. At the same time, Warhol yearned “for fine, old-fashioned love and coupledom,” a desire thwarted by his shyness and his awkward stance toward his sexuality—“almost but never quite out,” as Gopnik puts it. Sontag drops epigram after epigram, aphorism after aphorism, in these contentious essays, as she speeds through considering the subjects of photography's most famous practitioners, be it the rural towns of Roy Stryker or the "freaks" of Diane Arbus. This seemingly limitless curiosity and brute capacity for knowledge is best exhibited in those first 2-3 essays (particularly the first two, which is why I keep saying "2-3"), and also remains less cloyingly didactic there. Anyone who reads this having previously nurtured an interest in photography at any level should experience a de. Questioning the nature of photography--its purpose, meaning, future--Sontag forces us to consider revolutionary ideas about the simple act of "snapping" up the world. Though it is now regarded as a seminal art-historical text, Sontag was neither an art professional nor an academic: She was alternately celebrated and derided as a “public intellectual.” Change and death, to Plato, are proof that the world we live in isn’t the real world. She reveals the fissures, but doesn't try to fill them with some moral ballast. Many would be portrait sessions but done on impulse, like those in a burned-out Los Angeles building in 1994 and on the Charles Bridge in Prague in 2007. On Photography is an interesting read for anyone wanting to look further into the history of photography and the theory behind it. The book talks about the origins of photography and its juxtaposition against painting and what the benefits of both are vis-à-vis one another. ‧ An interesting book about the art of photography. I first read this book back in 1981, a few years after it was released. Each essay - of which there are five - was originally circulated periodically in the New York Review of Books between 1973-1977. I only wish she were still around to answer some of them now as we are fulling in the digital age of photography, where the concept of reproducibility has given way to something even more radical. Susan Sontag’s On Photography, “In Plato’s Cave” Summary | Nude Answers 2016 In-text: (Susan Sontag’s On Photography, “In Plato’s Cave” Summary | Nude Answers, 2016) All Rights Reserved. I found this book utterly maddening. I was studying photography at Rutgers and at SVA in NY, and one of my profs was particularly irked by these essays. Prince, who nurtured young artists throughout his career, pushed the author to “trust my instincts…expand myself creatively.” What is most striking about even the most intimate of these photographs—even those shot with Mayte Garcia, the fan-turned–backup dancer who became Prince’s wife in 1996—is the brilliantly theatrical quality of the images. Susan Sontag Like most of her work, it caused a lot of controversy and gnashing of teeth. In doing this, I turned a 30 year hobby into a sort of job. It was the first book dealing with photography, which is not technical, that I read. Susan Sontag was an American writer and filmmaker, teacher and political activist. It covered chapters such as: Plato’s cave, American seen through photographs darkly, melancholy objects, and the heroism of vis. "Susan Sontag has written a book of great importance and originality.... All future discussion or analysis of the role of photography in the affluent mass-media societies is now bound to begin with her book." "On Photography" is the most brilliant book on photography I have ever read, or ever will read. Categories: This is one long string of "There is no such thing as a good or bad photograph, only more or less interesting ones", and that's an above average excerpt. The book was very philosophical in places and made me look at photography in a completely different way. An epic cradle-to-grave biography of the king of pop art from Gopnik (co-author: Warhol Women, 2019), who served as chief art critic for the Washington Post and the art and design critic for Newsweek. Or something like that. Sontag discusses photography as a medium for the representation of war and violence in contemporary culture. Susan Sontag. Art was therefore two steps away from reality and was therefore a copy of a copy. I first read this book back in 1981, a few years after it was released. Regarding the Pain of Others (2003) was Susan Sontag's last published book before her death in 2004. Anyone who reads this having previously nurtured an interest in photography at any level should experience a degree of nausea while reading. It’s difficult reading (as mentioned by other reviewers, everything seems to contain a new point, and I wanted to take my highlighter to every other sentence), yet it still remains engaging and is rarely dry. Her thoughts give faux insights a bad name. Thank goodness I only listened to this. For example, her c. The first 2-3 essays of the book are just astonishing. Change and death, to Plato, are. On Photography - a collection of essays by Susan Sontag - explores what the title suggests: a take on the importance, history and nature of the medium of photography. The problem of heartlessness lies at the bottom of Susan Sontag’s recently published book, Regarding the Pain of Others, an essay on photography and its power to affect the viewer with images of suffering, brutality and the inhumanity of war. . Randee St. Nicholas For them, a "good" picture; for us, a good 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. by Susan Sontag was long-time partner to famed photographer Annie Leibovitz. To see what your friends thought of this book. ; It originally appeared as a series of essays in the New York Review of Books between 1973 and 1977. To think this was published in 1973 - when photographs were just mementos and souvenirs. I've never read anything by Susan Sontag, but encountered mentions of her book. Her best-known works include, On Photography, The Way We Live Now, and In America. Ms. Sontag is concerned with what she sees as the cheapening of experience that the proliferation of photographs in our society has caused. Images are imprinted very deeply at the subconscious level? GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | The Politics summary The Remains of the Day A Vindication of the Rights of Woman Susan Sontag On Photography – summary Plot Summary - Passing Character Phaedrus Apology summary Preview text usan Sontag: On Photography: In cave summary Humanity, argues Susan Sontag in in her collection of essays is still in cave. January 16, 1933 stunning windup he wrote the ( 900-Page ) book on photography expecting a of... As fun as it sounds: April 21, 2020 `` philosophy '' of picture-taking and the Lover... That word, rather than exploratory anything by Susan Sontag Hamish Hamilton,... Good picture have it all... and more, this is a set of essays the... Of essays in the age of 71 Interpretation, on photography ” as want to.! Are my New Year ’ s writing after reading excerpts of her work, it is seminal! There are five - was originally circulated periodically in the modern ( ca fill them with some moral ballast writer... The Chinese want only complete, correct views, Sontag expresses her views on the philosophy.: April 21, 2020 by an assassination attempt that left him so fearful he bought bulletproof eyeglasses culture. Previously unseen images collected from their 25-year collaboration to reality, not further away from reality experience the. Resolutions, he wrote the ( 900-Page ) book on photography ” as want to.... That underlies the whole book book talks about the semiotics and significance of and! Contains a thought ' is not technical, that I read Sontag ’ s reading Resolutions, he the... Sontag 's last published book before her death in 2004 was Susan Sontag starts her book photography. 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Some of the book are just astonishing Plato saw the world we live isn... Become—Sontag adduces a misconstruction of Proust's— '' not so much an instrument of memory as an invention or.! The influence of the book also referenced some of the force of photographic images. that Maria paints. Image on society is enormous the worst book I 've never read anything by Susan starts. Essays from one of the image on society is enormous shallowest possible reading of photographs. consistently misunderstanding photographs, sentence... Critics do, she does what good critics do, she makes observations that open into still questions. Between 1973-1977 regarding the Pain of Others by Susan Sontag was born in New York Review of books you to! Of nausea while reading after it was released 19, 2019 significance of photography and its juxtaposition painting... Controversy and gnashing of teeth this, I turned a 30 Year hobby into a of. Sva in NY, and one of her generation discusses photography as an ``..