On Photography
Encyclopedia
Essay
An essay is a piece of writing which is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. The definition...
s by Susan Sontag
Susan Sontag
Susan Sontag was an American author, literary theorist, feminist and political activist whose works include On Photography and Against Interpretation.-Life:...
. It originally appeared as a series of essays in the New York Review of Books between 1973 and 1977.
Contents
In the book, Sontag expresses her views on the history and present-day role of photography in capitalistCapitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
societies as of the 1970s. Sontag discusses many examples of modern photography. Among these, she contrasts Diane Arbus
Diane Arbus
Diane Arbus March 14, 1923 – July 26, 1971) was an American photographer and writer noted for black-and-white square photographs of "deviant and marginal people or of people whose normality seems ugly or surreal." A friend said that Arbus said that she was "afraid.....
's work with that of Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
-era documentary photography
Documentary photography
Documentary photography usually refers to a popular form of photography used to chronicle significant and historical events. It is typically covered in professional photojournalism, but it may also be an amateur, artistic, or academic pursuit...
commissioned by the Farm Security Administration
Farm Security Administration
Initially created as the Resettlement Administration in 1935 as part of the New Deal in the United States, the Farm Security Administration was an effort during the Depression to combat American rural poverty...
.
She also explores the history of American photography in relation to the idealistic notions of America put forth by Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman
Walter "Walt" Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse...
and traces these ideas through to the increasingly cynical aesthetic notions of the 1970s, particularly in relation to Arbus and Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
.
Sontag argues that the proliferation of photographic images had begun to establish within people a "chronic voyeuristic relation" to the world around them. Among the consequences of photography is that the meaning of all events is leveled and made equal. This idea did not originate with Sontag, who often synthesized European cultural thinkers with her particular eye toward America.
As she argues, perhaps originally with regard to photography, the medium fostered an attitude of anti-intervention. Sontag says that the individual who seeks to record cannot intervene, and that the person who intervenes cannot then faithfully record, for the two aims contradict each other. In this context, she discusses in some depth, the relationship of photography to politics.
Criticism and acclaim
On Photography won the National Book Critics' Circle Award for 1977 and was selected among the top 20 books of 1977 by the editors of the New Times Book Review.In 1977, William H. Gass
William H. Gass
William Howard Gass is an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, critic, and former philosophy professor. He has written two novels, three collections of short stories, a collection of novellas, and seven volumes of essays, three of which have won National Book Critics Circle Award...
, writing in the New York Times, said the book "shall surely stand near the beginning of all our thoughts upon the subject" of photography. http://www.nytimes.com/1977/12/18/books/booksspecial/sontag-photo.html?scp=3&sq=Sontag%20%22on%20photography%22&st=Search
In a 1998 appraisal of the work, Michael Starenko, wrote in Afterimage magazine that "On Photography has become so deeply absorbed into this discourse that Sontag's claims about photography, as well as her mode of argument, have become part of the rhetorical 'tool kit' that photography theorists and critics carry around in their heads." http://www.thefreelibrary.com/On+Photography.(Sontag's+On+Photography+at+20)-a020582791
Sontag's work is literary and polemic
Polemic
A polemic is a variety of arguments or controversies made against one opinion, doctrine, or person. Other variations of argument are debate and discussion...
al rather than academic. It includes no bibliography, and few notes. There is little sustained analysis of the work of any particular photographer and is not in any sense a research project as often written by Ph.D students. Many of the lesser reviews from the world of art photography that followed On Photography at the time of its publication were skeptical and often hostile, such as those of Colin L. Westerbeck and Michael Lesey.
In 2004 Sontag published a partial refutation of the opinions she espoused in On Photography in her 1994 collection of essays Regarding the Pain of Others
Regarding the Pain of Others
Regarding the Pain of Others was Susan Sontag's last published book before her death in 2004. It is regarded by many to be a follow-up or addendum to On Photography, despite the fact that the two books have radically different opinions about photography. This long essay is especially interested in...
. This book may be deemed as a postscript or addition to On Photography. Sontag's publishing history includes a similar sequence with regard to her work Illness as Metaphor
Illness as Metaphor
Illness as Metaphor is a nonfiction work written by Susan Sontag and published in 1978. She challenged the "blame the victim" mentality behind the language society often uses to describe diseases and those who suffer from them....
from the 1970s and AIDS and Its Metaphors
AIDS and Its Metaphors
AIDS and Its Metaphors is the companion book to Illness as Metaphor, also by Susan Sontag. While Illness as Metaphor drew on her experiences as a cancer patient and focused on the various metaphors that we attribute to cancer, AIDS and Its Metaphors extends this argument to the AIDS crisis...
a decade later, which included a revision of many ideas contained in the earlier work.
Editions
- New York: Farrar, Straus and GirouxFarrar, Straus and GirouxFarrar, Straus and Giroux is an American book publishing company, founded in 1946 by Roger W. Straus, Jr. and John C. Farrar. Known primarily as Farrar, Straus in its first decade of existence, the company was renamed several times, including Farrar, Straus and Young and Farrar, Straus and Cudahy...
, 1977. ISBN 0374226261. - London: Allan LaneAllan LaneAllan "Rocky" Lane was a studio leading man and the star of many cowboy B-movies in the 1940s and 1950s. He appeared in more than 125 films and TV shows in a career lasting from 1929 to 1966...
, 1978. ISBN 071391128X. - New York: Anchor BooksRandom HouseRandom House, Inc. is the largest general-interest trade book publisher in the world. It has been owned since 1998 by the German private media corporation Bertelsmann and has become the umbrella brand for Bertelsmann book publishing. Random House also has a movie production arm, Random House Films,...
, 1990. ISBN 0-385-26706-1.
Earlier versions of these essays appeared in The New York Review of Books
The New York Review of Books
The New York Review of Books is a fortnightly magazine with articles on literature, culture and current affairs. Published in New York City, it takes as its point of departure that the discussion of important books is itself an indispensable literary activity...
:
- Volume 20, No. 16 (October 18, 1973)
- Volume 20, No. 18 (November 15, 1973)
- Volume 21, No. 6 (April 18, 1974)
- Volume 21, No. 19 (November 28, 1974)
- Volume 23, No. 21 & 22 (January 20, 1977)
- Volume 24, No. 11 (June 23, 1977)