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Susan Sontag On Photography – summary
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Susan Sontag – On Photography – summary
Throughout history reality has been related through images and philosophers such as Plato have
made efforts to diminish our reliance on representations by pointing at a direct ways to grasp the
real. Susan Sontag quotes Feuerbach in saying that our age prefers the photograph to the real thing,
the appearance before experience. This argument, Sontag says, is widely accepted in modern culture
which is constantly engaged with producing and consuming images to such a degree that
photography has been made essential for the health of the economy and the stability of social
structures.
Photography, according to Susan Sontag, holds an almost unlimited authority in modern society. Such
photographic images are capable of replacing reality by virtue of being not only a mirror or
interpretation of in, but also a relic of reality, something that is taken straight from it.
Photography, unlike painting, does not only address and represent its object and does not only
resemble it; it is also a part of the object, its direct extension.
Photography, according to Sontag, is a form of acquisition in a number of ways. When you
photograph something, it becomes a part of certain knowledge system, adapted to schemas of
classification and storage starting from family photographs up to police, political and scientific usage.
Photography, in other words, is a form of supervision.
Primitive tribes are afraid that the camera will take their soul or something from their being. Modern
societies do not of course share this fear by still views photography as directly related to the material
world, a physical relic of it. our attitude towards photographs is still fetishistic, still voodoo like.
A typical nowadays statement is that an experience was "like in a movie", which is said when other
forms of description fail to convey how real a sensation was. While many people in developing
countries are still hesitant about being photographed, people in industrialized countries are more
than happy to stand in front of a camera and that is because, Sontag argues, that being photographed
gives us a sense of being real and of existing.
Photography is a means for capturing reality (which is considered unobtainable) by freezing it. You
cannot hold reality but you can hold a photograph. photography in not only a way of preserving the
past but also a way of handling the present., with photographic images becoming more and more
widespread in modern times.
Photography also means that we can see something before we experience it, and that takes away
from the virginity and openness of the way we experience reality. reality, in other words, is
photographed before it is experienced.
Photography, Susan Sontag holds, is not a mere copy of reality but rather a recycled copy. We
consume photographs at an ever increasing rate and they are therefore consumed and need to be