Quotessence
Home / Authors / Susan Sontag
Susan Sontag

Susan Sontag Quotes

Writer

Filter quotes by topic

AllArtPhotographPhotographyPeopleWorldWritingIfsSusan SontagWayThinkingMayBooksHumansSelfRealityFotografíaPersonsBook QuotesCamerasFeels

Famous Susan Sontag Quotes

“Between two fantasy alternatives, that Holbein the Younger had lived long enough to have painted Shakespeare or that a prototype of the camera had been invented early enough to have photographed him, most Bardolators would choose the photograph. This is not just because it would presumably show what Shakespeare really looked like, for even if the photograph were faded, barely legible, a brownish shadow, we would probably still prefer it to another glorious Holbein. Having a photograph of Shakespeare would be like having a nail from the True Cross.”

IfsLongStillsTwoEnoughShowsWould BeFantasyShadowCrossesCamerasPhotographAlternativesGloriousNailsFadedPrototype
Book:On photography
Create image

“Cameras began duplicating the world at that moment when the human landscape started to undergo a vertiginous rate of change: while an untold number of forms of biological and social life are being destroyed in a brief span of time, a device is available to record what is disappearing.”

WorldHumansMomentsFormSocialNumbersRecordsPhotographyCamerasRateAvailableDisappearDestroyedLandscapeDevicesThat MomentSocial LifeRate Of Change
Book:On photography
Create image

“Our very sense of situation is now articulated by the camera's interventions. The omnipresence of cameras persuasively suggests that time consists of interesting events, events worth photographing. This, in turn, makes it easy to feel that any event, once underway, and whatever its moral character, should be allowed to complete itself - so that something else can be brought into the world, the photograph.”

WorldFeelsShouldCharacterTurnsEasyInterestingSituationMoralEventsCamerasPhotographInterventionMoral Character
Book:On photography
Create image

“To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them that they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed. Just as a camera is a sublimation of the gun, to photograph someone is a subliminal murder - a soft murder, appropriate to a sad, frightened time.”

PeopleTurnsSeeingObjectsGunMurderCamerasPhotographAppropriateFrightenedPossessedSubliminal
Book:On photography
Create image