jazzy_dave: (bookish)
[personal profile] jazzy_dave
Susan Sontag "On Photography" (Penguin Books)




Susan Sontag's original essays on the meaning of photography and the photographic image are challenging. She presents a wide range of ideas and discusses the work of some of the great photographers of the past century. Whether you agree with her views about the aggressive nature of photography or the essential "nonintervention" of the act of taking a picture, you can savour the intelligent arguments that she presents.

These essays are six meditations on the nature and implications of photography. Each essay pivots engagingly around a provocative theme: the “aesthetic consumerism” exemplified by taking and collecting photographs, the inherent surrealism of photographs, the incurable defensiveness of those who claim photography an art form, photography’s project of beautifying the world, the West as a “culture based on images”.


I was disappointed that there were no pictorial examples of the multitude of references made by Sontag. The book was nevertheless an excellent and invigorating read.

Date: 2020-04-05 04:17 pm (UTC)
penpusher: (Default)
From: [personal profile] penpusher
Let me reply with someone else's LiveJournal entry that I believe is pertinent.

https://forioscribe.livejournal.com/789422.html

Profile

jazzy_dave: (Default)
jazzy_dave

June 2025

S M T W T F S
123 4567
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
2930     

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jun. 15th, 2025 11:34 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios