Book 26 - Susan Sontag "On Photography"
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jazzy_daveSusan 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.
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.
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Date: 2020-04-05 04:17 pm (UTC)https://forioscribe.livejournal.com/789422.html