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On photography

Book by Susan Sontag · 50 quotes · Photograph, Photography, World

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On photography Quotes

“Any photograph has multiple meanings: indeed, to see something in the form of a photograph is to encounter a potential object of fascination. The ultimate wisdom of the photographic image is to say: “There is the surface. Now think – or rather feel, intuit – what is beyond it, what the reality must be like if it looks this way.’ Photographs, which cannot themselves explain anything, are inexhaustible invitations to deduction, speculation, and fantasy”

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“To us, the difference between the #‎ photographer as an individual eye and the photographer as an objective recorder seems fundamental, the difference often regarded, mistakenly, as separating photography as art from #‎ photography as document. But both are logical extensions of what photography means: note-taking on, potentially, everything in the world, from every possible angle.”

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“Because each photograph is only a fragment, its moral and emotional weight depends on where it is inserted. A photograph changes according to the context in which it is seen: thus Smith's Minamata photographs will seem different on a contact sheet, in a gallery, in a political demonstration, in a police file, in a photographic magazine, in a book, on a living-room wall. Each o these situations suggest a different use for the photographs but none can secure their meaning.”

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“Knowing a great deal about what is in the world art, catastrophe, the beauties of nature through photographic images, people are frequently disappointed, surprised, unmoved when the see the real thing. For photographic images tend to subtract feeling from something we experience at first hand and the feelings they do arouse are, largely, not those we have in real life. Often something disturbs us more in photographed form than it does when we actually experience it.”

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“But the very question of whether photography is or is not an art is essentially a misleading one. Although photography generates works that can be called art --it requires subjectivity, it can lie, it gives aesthetic pleasure-- 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 language, one can make scientific discourse, bureaucratic memoranda, love letters, grocery lists, and Balzac's Paris. Out of photography, one can make passport pictures, weather photographs, pornographic pictures, X-rays, wedding pictures, and Atget's Paris. Photography is not an art like, say, painting and poetry. Although the activities of some photographers conform to the traditional notion of a fine art, the activity of exceptionally talented individuals producing discrete objects that have value in themselves, form the beginning photography has also lent itself to that notion of art which says that art is obsolete. The power of photography --and its centrality in present aesthetic concerns-- is that it confirms both ideas of art. But the way in which photography renders art obsolete is, in the long run, stronger.”

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“As fotografias eram vistas como um modo de dar informação a pessoas que não tinham o hábito da leitura. o Daily News ainda se autodenomina New York's Picture Newspaper, apelando a uma identificação populista. No extremo oposto da escala, o Le Monde, um jornal destinado a leitores preparados, bem informados, não utiliza quaisquer fotografias, pois pressupõe-se que, para os seus leitores, a fotografia só serviria de ilustração para a análise contida num artigo.”

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“(...) escreve Arbus, "foi nunca ter enfrentado qualquer adversidade. Encontrava-me confinada a uma sensação de irrealidade... E, por mais absurdo que pareça, a sensação de imunidade era dolorosa" Sentindo um descontentamento semelhante, West conseguiu, em 1927, um emprego como rececionista noturno num deprimente hotel de Manhattan. A maneira de Arbus procurar experiências e, por isso, adquirir um sentido de realidade, foi a câmera. (...) O interesse de Arbus pelos freaks exprime um desejo de violar a sua própria inocência.”

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“Quanto mais retrocedemos na história menos nítida é a distinção entre imagens e coisas reais, como observou E.H. Gombrich; nas sociedades primitivas, a coisa e a sua imagem não eram mais do que duas manifestações diferentes, ou seja, fisicamente distintas, da mesma energia ou espírito. A isso se deve a suposta eficácia das imagens para propiciar e controlar presenças de grande poder. Esses poderes, essas presenças estavam presentes nelas.”

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“O objetivo dos retratos das famílias burguesas nos séculos XVIII e XIX era confirmar uma imagem ideal do modelo (proclamando o seu estatuto social e embelezando a sua aparência); em função deste propósito, é fácil compreender porque é que as pessoas não sentiam necessidade de ter mais do que um retrato. O que o registo fotográfico confirma é, mais modestamente, que a pessoa existe; por isso eles nunca são demais.”

FotografiaSusan SontagEnsaios Sobre Fotografia
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“Algo feo o grotesco puede ser conmovedor porque la atención del fotógrafo lo ha dignificado. Algo bello puede ser objeto de sentimientos tristes porque ha envejecido o decaído o ya no existe. Todas las fotografías son memento morí. Hacer una fotografía es participar de la mortalidad, vulnerabilidad, mutabilidad de otra persona o cosa. Precisamente porque seccionan un momento y lo congelan, todas las fotografías atestiguan la despiadada disolución del tiempo.”

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“Hay algo depredador en la acción de hacer una foto. Fotografiar personas es violarlas, pues se las ve como jamás se ven a sí mismas, se las conoce como nunca pueden conocerse; transforma a las personas en objetos que pueden ser poseídos simbólicamente. Así como la cámara es una sublimación del arma, fotografiar a alguien es cometer un asesinato sublimado, un asesinato blando, digno de una época triste, atemorizada.”

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“The lover's photograph hidden in a married woman's wallet, the poster photograph of a rock star tacked up over an adolescent's bed, the campaign-button image of a politician's face pinned on a voter's coat, the snapshots of a cabdriver's children clipped to the visor--all such talismanic uses of photographs express a feeling both sentimental and implicitly magical: they are attempts to contact or lay claim to another reality.”

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