Just finished "On Photography" by Susan Sontag
I picked this up because I wanted to understand photography beyond like just pointing and clicking. And damn, Sontag delivered. The immense amount of information about cameras, the history of the medium, photographers like Diane Arbus and Walker Evans, the technical evolution from daguerreotypes to modern photography. She even gets into how the camera changed the way we perceive beauty itself, that we now judge things by how they'd look in a photograph rather than how they look to our naked eyes.
The best parts for me were ofcourse the philosophical bits. She uses Plato's cave allegory to argue that photographs are like shadows. They look like reality but they're not. They appropriate reality, but like they don't capture it. The first chapter "In Plato's Cave" was particularly mind-bending. Also loved her take on how photography has this voyeuristic element, how the photographer becomes a passive observer who cannot intervene in what they're witnessing.
Now here's the thing. Some of this felt incredibly relevant even today. The whole argument about how we experience the world through a camera lens instead of actually living it? Like look at Instagram. Sontag wrote this in the 70s and it hits harder now than ever.
But some portions felt kinda outdated. Her discussions were very rooted in 70s American photography and the specific cultural moment of that era. The references to certain photographers and movements might not resonate with someone like me who's unfamiliar with that context. Also, some chapters dragged a bit and could have been shorter.
Overall though, if one is interested in understanding what photography actually does to us as a society, this is a very good read I'd say. Dense at times, but rewarding.
by dassicity
10 Comments
Thank you! This is very inspiring. I was looking for a book in photography. I’m definitely going to check this book out.
Thanks for this post. Always glad to see appreciation for Susan Sontag.
On a personal note, Sontag and the celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz were partners for 15 years, from 1989 to Sontag’s death in 2004. In her book *A Photographer’s Life: 1990-2005*, Leibovitz included many pictures of Sontag in her final years.
Thanks for sharing.
Recommend Teju Cole.
>[Known and Strange Things](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teju_Cole#Known_and_Strange_Things)
>In 2016, Cole published his first collection of essays and criticism. Writing for the New York Times, the poet Claudia Rankine called it “an essential and scintillating journey,”[23] and singled out, in particular, his essays on photography, wherein he “reveals [his] voracious appetite for and love of the visual.”
Great review and you managed to hook me, even I don’t have a particular interest in photography. The Plato reference made me interested and also the history.
The way Susan Sontag writes about Diane Arbus’s death is just insulting, made me instantly dislike the book.
Next up: Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes, and Ghost Image by Herve Guibert. Both philosophical/meditative texts on photography. They’re also rooted in their time (70’s and 80’s), but not as dense as Sontag’s essays.
You’ll definitely get a lot out of it! Sontag’s insights are eye-opening, even if it gets a bit dense at times. Enjoy!
This isgood. I’ve never read her and though I’ve heard her name alot I’ve never known what she writes about. I guess I’ll start with this one.
That is an excellent review of Sontag. The fact that a text written in the 70s perfectly diagnoses modern Instagram culture proves its endurance. A book this dense and rewarding demands a space of its own—the kind of read that requires a true Quiet Corner protocol to block out all the modern noise. Thanks for the breakdown!