I've been catching up on some important, but enjoyable reading over the holidays and so here are a few notes on Susan Sontag's On Photography book.
On Photography by Susan Sontag
Susan Sontag provides several separate essays in her book. Some of the topics discussed overlap and others are quite original in each of the individual essays. The book is easy to read, but does not always flow so smoothly from one topic to the other. It’s the kind of book that can be read several times over and new ideas will pop out from the pages.
I’ve made a few notes from each of the essays of the points that meant the most to me. Mostly I agree with her ideas, but a few I don’t think many active photographers would agree with. Looking through Amazon reviews for this book, one can see there is a division between the readers who generally agree with most of what Sontag presents, and the readers who believe she is being too negative towards photography.
I tend to agree with most of what she presents, and some of it is negative criticism simply because photography can be seen as being a negative activity in some of it’s aspects.
The book first appeared in 1977 and despite the progress in the development of photography nearly all of Sontag’s thoughts are still valid in today’s photography environment.
In Plato’s Cave
Sontag gives an interesting and original view on how photographs have extended into our lives and changed the way we think about news, places, history etc. Sontag believes that photography has become one of the main ways of experiencing things.
America Seen Through Photographs, Darkly
Early photographs were made to be “idealized images”, and even today amateurs strive to photograph something beautiful.
She goes on to say “all photographs accord value to their subjects, but the meaning of value can be changed. This can be demonstrated by taking the value of a photograph by a famous photographer.” This statement is in line with some of the John Berger’s thoughts in his book ‘Ways of Seeing’, and I relate it with some of the information I have been reading about Eugene Atget, where his photographs held little value until the Museum of Modern Art (MMA) and others made Atget famous after his death.
This essay then changes tact and Sontag makes a comparison between an exhibit in 1955 called “Family Man” organized by Edward Steichen. 503 photographs from 68 countries and 273 photographers trying to show all people are one humanity. Then in 1972 the MMA displayed 112 photographs by Diane Arbus that showed the complete opposite. Each one of Arbus’ photographs showed a freak in some sense of the word because they were so different.
Sontag mentions something interesting that Brassai had once said; that he denounced photographers who try to trap their subjects off-guard in the erroneous belief that something special will be revealed about them. Sontag does not agree with Brassai on this point and neither do I.
The essay makes its way back to the work of Diane Arbus and makes some very astute observations about Arbus. She states that Arbus clearly wanted her subjects to be fully aware of being photographed. Sontag explains a little about the psychological impact of photographing people’s faces at different angles. Sontag believes Arbus must have befriended most of her subjects to be allowed to photograph them from the front.
Sontag concludes this essay by saying that people in industrialized nations have become ‘image junkies’ needing reality and experience confirmed by photographs. “Ultimately, having an experience becomes identical with taking a photograph of it….” I don’t quite agree with this last statement, but can see that people attach great importance to recording their experience through photography for fear of losing something that no longer exists.
Melancholy Objects
Sontag looks at the class issue and how it relates to photography. She compares several famous photographers works and how they documented people differently. She discusses how in USA so many photographers have photographed the decay and soon to be last part of USA.
I’ve noticed that decay is still something that draws a lot of photographers focus. This maybe because photographing decay is easier than finding something beautiful in today’s hectic world. And even once something beautiful has been found, like a flower, it’s not so easy to make the photograph stand out as a work of beauty.
The Heroism of Vision
Sontag talks about photographing the world in this essay. She says photographs have beautified the world; “Photographers were supposed to do more than just see the world as it is, including its already acclaimed marvels; they were to create interest, by new visual decisions.” This is becoming truer by the day as almost everything has already been photographed. She says that what became beautiful was just what the eye can’t (or doesn’t) see. She’s talking about abstract impressionists work here.
Sontag talks about how the impressionists were influenced by photography. She says it is common place, but I doubt all painters will admit to such a thing. Interestingly, I read that Eugene Atget owned a shop in Paris called ‘Documents pour Artists’ – providing pictures for painters.
She says from 1840 onward that painters and photographers have influenced and pillaged each other.
Sontag discusses a observations about Atget. She says that Weston thought Atget as “not a fine technician”, however contemporary taste faults Weston for his devotion to perfect print. Imperfect technique has come to be appreciated precisely because it breaks the sedate equation of Nature and Beauty. I dare say John Szarkowski had something to do with the change in taste after promoting Atget’s work after his demise.
One last interesting quote from this essay; “Photographs can do distress. But the anesthetizing tendency of photography is such that the medium which conveys distress ends by neutralizing it.” Here Sontag is talking about how a photograph of something unpleasant can cause distress, but after it is viewed so many times, the next photograph of a similar situation is no longer as distressing.
Photographic Evangels
This essay deals with a reoccurring question from some of her previous essays; whether photography is an aggressive act. She states that few photographers has spoken openly about the exploitative aspects, but two who have are Avedon and Henri Cartier-Bresson. In a biography of Henri Cartier-Bresson by Pierre Assouline it is mentioned that Cartier-Bresson likened his photography to his days in Africa as a wildlife hunter.
From a different perspective Sontag says that Ansel Adams called the camera “instruments of love and revelation.”
For me, photography falls into both sides of the fence depending on the type of photography and even perhaps the photographer themselves. Still life photography can hardly be called aggressive, whereas some paparazzi would appear to be aggressive.
The essay discusses the common topic of whether photography is an art or not. She gives some interesting ideas. It’s the first time I have seen where someone compares commercial assignments or picture postcards with photography as an art. She states that museum exhibits become studies of the possibilities of photography. She, however does not try to determine at what point a photographers work becomes art.
Then, she goes on to discuss what makes a good photograph. “one criterion of evaluation which painting and photography do share is inovativeness; both painting and photographs are often valued because they impose new formal schemes or changes in the visual language. Another defining characteristic is quality of presence.” Quite different from value of a photograph, there is not enough written about what makes a good photograph in my opinion, and Sontag statement above is quite accurate and daring.
Sontag says its not altogether wrong to say there is no such thing as a bad photograph, only less interesting ones, less relevant or less mysterious.
At the end of this essay Sontag very clearly summarizes photography in terms of being an art; “Photography is not, to begin with, an art form at all. Like language it is a medium in which works of art (among other things) are made.” “Out of photography, one can make passport photos, weather, porno, wedding albums and Atget Paris.”
The Image World
A large part of this essay is about how photography differs in China from other places and Sontag suggests that photography will probably not be put to best use as a surveillance tool in China because of the strict formal way in which most photographs are taken. This was very good analysis from the 70s and it would appear that she was correct. I wonder if she saw how much the West was going to relay on photography as a surveillance tool.
