Week 9: Susan Sontag On photography
Week 9: Susan Sontag On photography
Since the inventory in 1839, images have been photographed, and this led to a significant change in our notions of what is the valuable thing to look at and what we have a right to observe. They are a grammar and, even more importantly, an ethics of seeing. The article points out that the most important result of the photographic enterprise is to give us the sense that we can hold the whole world in our heads - as a anthology of images.
To collect photographs is to collect the world.
With still photographs the image is also an object, lightweight, cheap to produce, easy to carry about, accumulate, store.
Photographs make up and thicken the environment we recognize as modern. Photographs are experience captured, and the camera is the ideal arm of consciousness in its acquisitive mood.
To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed. It means putting oneself into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge -- and, therefore, like power.
The power of photographs, I believe, is enormous, in a way that makes us feel some kind of emotions - some photographs create some kind of emotional attachment or sense that eventually connects to human memory.
Susan sees photograph as a powerful medium that creates knowledge. I agree because I usually take photos and save photos not only to remember the memory but also to relate to in a real life. I believe most of the people look at photos to sort information in order to relate to how the world they are living is.
Photographs gives evidence.
Although pictures could distort, there is always a presumption that something exists, or did exist, which is like what's in the picture. Whatever the limitations (through amateurism) or pretensions (through artistry) of the individual photographer, a photograph seems to have a more innocent, and therefore more accurate, relation to visible reality than do other mimetic objects.
Photographs is a means for capturing reality, and it is not only a way of preserving the past but also a way of handling the present.
Since the inventory in 1839, images have been photographed, and this led to a significant change in our notions of what is the valuable thing to look at and what we have a right to observe. They are a grammar and, even more importantly, an ethics of seeing. The article points out that the most important result of the photographic enterprise is to give us the sense that we can hold the whole world in our heads - as a anthology of images.
To collect photographs is to collect the world.
With still photographs the image is also an object, lightweight, cheap to produce, easy to carry about, accumulate, store.
Photographs make up and thicken the environment we recognize as modern. Photographs are experience captured, and the camera is the ideal arm of consciousness in its acquisitive mood.
To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed. It means putting oneself into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge -- and, therefore, like power.
The power of photographs, I believe, is enormous, in a way that makes us feel some kind of emotions - some photographs create some kind of emotional attachment or sense that eventually connects to human memory.
Susan sees photograph as a powerful medium that creates knowledge. I agree because I usually take photos and save photos not only to remember the memory but also to relate to in a real life. I believe most of the people look at photos to sort information in order to relate to how the world they are living is.
Photographs gives evidence.
Although pictures could distort, there is always a presumption that something exists, or did exist, which is like what's in the picture. Whatever the limitations (through amateurism) or pretensions (through artistry) of the individual photographer, a photograph seems to have a more innocent, and therefore more accurate, relation to visible reality than do other mimetic objects.
Photographs is a means for capturing reality, and it is not only a way of preserving the past but also a way of handling the present.
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