susan sontag on photography context

With the publication of Susan Sontag's diaries, the development of her career can now be evaluated in a more genetic sense, so that the origins of her ideas and plans for publication are made plain in the context of her role as a public intellectual, who is increasingly aware of her impact on her culture. Although he finds Sontag’s book to be one of the most insightful contributions to the understanding of photography, Evernden questions her emphasis on the act of photography as basically one of aggression; he suggests that a more pluralistic approach might be more useful. They give us our sense of clarity, even our ethics of seeing. The subject of voyeurism can also be analyzed through a different lens, namely forensic photography. The first work following the introduction, that catches the audiences’ eye, is a picture of Susan Sontag at Petra, Jordan (1994) (Fig. The storyline of Sontag itself is interweaved in the exhibition with the personal story of Leibovitz and her family, charting not a plot trajectory of family/celebrity drama, but instead seamlessly fuses her personal life with Sontag into the quiet notions of ordinary American family life, love and loss. I picked up the book shortly before leaving for the United States, understanding it … Again and again photography’s predatory nature is attacked, and artistic seriousness is denied the photographer’s efforts. Another key feature of this photograph is how it is split into several parts overlapping each other and stitched together with sticky tape, suggesting a kind of “physical deconstruction” of Susan Sontag through Leibovitz’s eyes, while the curved formation of the newly reconstructed photograph, removes, ironically, a certain stiffness in death that the otherwise normal landscape photograph might have portrayed. For reading On Photography is a not-so-merry merry-go-round-and-round. By transcribing a moment, where Sontag is at her most ordinary and partaking in something that is so intrinsic to human existence – weary but simultaneously, at rest, Leibovitz sheds light onto an aspect of Sontag the world is not privy to. Photographs of ourselves also evoke sadness in that they show the passage of time and the inevitability of aging and death. Nowhere does the author take us on a tour of the Rochester mansion of George Eastman, although she does provide an etymology of the ugly word kodac. New York: Routledge, 1990. The penultimate essay in the book, Photographic Evangels, examines the often contradictory views about the medium that have been held by some of its more forward-thinking advocates.In Sontag’s opinion, it has been necessary for them to ‘evangelise’ in order to define what, if anything, separates their own output from the … Plato’s classical, derogatory attitude toward images as shadows has been updated and overturned. The ability of photography as medium to provide a platform for human response to death can be seen by comparing the emotional responses of both Leibovitz and Araki. Such an image is powerful as it provides a gripping “memory picture” of the deceased for relatives, at the last moments. Thus, audience participation may be reduced to voyeurism, whereby what is perceived is framed and objectified. One fiber of this cruelty is the insatiability of the photographing eye. 3Karen Finley at her home in Nyack, New York1992Frame: 99.4 x 124.8 x 3.8 cmby Annie Leibovitz. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982. More specifically, the published “Sentimental Journey”, similar to Leibovitz’s “A Photographer’s Life 1990-2005”, features a series of black-and-whites, documenting Araki’s relationship with his deceased wife Yoko. 4). 3 Caitlin McKinney, Leibovitz and Sontag: picturing an ethics of queer domesticity, Shift Queen’s Journal of Visual and Material Culture, Available: http://shiftjournal.org/archives/articles/2010/mckinney.pdf [Accessed: 1st September]. Sontag believes that surrealist photography is a mere phase of photography that isn’t relevant now (Just like 18th century pictorial photography) – a passing fashion. Another issue surrounding the publication of the photograph was the purported issue of Leibovitz consciously building upon Sontag’s reputation and near-celebrity status to cause scandal and publicity for her exhibition. To superimpose the ghost of those tragic moments that infringed upon the boundaries of life and death, and to realize the evidence of which is embedded on the walls and obscured from plain sight, renders the ostensibly innocent over-layer of the wall into something a haunting, all at once more menacing and sinister. And, to gain extra perspective, Tansey has painted using his own process of erasure; rather than add paint to the canvas, he often removes it, conjuring his image into being by means of reduction. It is a posture taken, not uncommon to the rest of us. In these photographs, the corpse would be manipulated and dressed up such that it would resemble slumber or lifelikeness. For the most part, she describes the relationship between photography and capitalism in society. Reviewed by Derral Cheatwood University of Baltimore The first question to ask is: "Why review this book in Studies in the Anthropology of Visual Communica­ tion?" Although a certain degree of voyeurism may be inevitable due to the nature of an exhibition (which implies a certain exhibitionist quality to the artist) especially in capturing images of death, Leibovitz makes attempt to bring this further, and in a way, allows audiences to pay their final respects and contemplate the death of this force of intellectual brilliance. 3) features a naked Karen Finley, wearing only socks with her bare back towards the camera, but languid and lying across a sofa, in a similar fashion. Sontag writes in her essay, “On Photography”, that the “…ambiguous relationship [between photographer and photograph] sets up a chronic voyeuristic relation to the world which levels the meaning of all events”. It is the same life presented by Leibovitz in the exhibition that eventually humanizes the image of Sontag in her death for the audience. Andy Warhol. Susan Sontag’s “On Photography” was first published as a series of essays in “The New York Review of Books” and then in book form in 1977. Unconsciously, vanitas has also become a subconscious commentary hidden in the backdrop of their lives and serves perhaps also, as a timely reminder to the audience about the close proximity of death to their own lives. Lastly, this somewhat voyeuristic work also presents a nearly unrecognizable figure of this larger-than-life public intellectual that had nearly reached celebrity status at the time of her death. Though it is now regarded as a seminal art-historical text, Sontag was neither an art professional nor an academic: She was alternately celebrated and derided as a “public intellectual.” Susan Sontag was born in Manhattan in 1933 and studied at the universities of Chicago, Harvard and Oxford. al., Henry Lee’s Crime Scene Handbook, New York: Academic Press, 2001. On Photography (Homage to Susan Sontag) investigates the contest between photography and the fine arts that Sontag herself discussed extensively. 2). “I don’t have two lives. Sontag goes on to describe the context in which Eddie Adams took what was arguably the most shocking image of the Vietnam war: the moment in which a … In his essay “Uses Of Photography”, John Berger – author of Ways Of Seeing – replies to Susan Sontag. They never were entirely accurate, but at one time they were sharp enough to mount a progressive critique of an important public art. 1 San Diego Museum of Art, Working Exhibition Checklist, Available: http://www.tfaoi.com/cm/4cm/4cm526.pdf [Accessed: 1st September]. Curation in itself, as illustrated by Araki, with no semblance of emotional input, alienates the audience through the sense of distance already established – between object and audience. For the camera, while it can artfully lie or be lenient, is an expert of cruelty. Start your 48-hour free trial and unlock all the summaries, Q&A, and analyses you need to get better grades now. As an element of post-mortem photography, and in general, taking the corpse as material, either by refashioning its image, or through relics, would work as reminders and recollections of the body of the person, hence engaging with the living, through the other senses, such as “associated actions, sensations and emotions that are not directly visible within the image.”. Word Count: 241. "To photograph people," Sontag said, "is to violate them...It turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed." Her life as female American public intellectual was not without its tribulations as well, struggling with poverty in the 1960s and her highly opinionated and sometimes opprobrious writings were met with criticism and controversy. Find summaries for every chapter, including a On Photography Chapter Summary Chart to help you understand the book. Instead, the light from the television set seems to be the focal point. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1984. The Karen Finley picture is highly idiosyncratic of Leibovitz’s celebrity works: saturated with stark colour contrasts. Evernden, Neil. She writes: “The of her unseemliness of Annie Leibovitz, one of the world’s best-known photographs, publishing intimate portraits lover Susan Sontag in the months before she died in December 2004 and then in the immediate aftermath of her death as she was laid out in the mortuary gurney, is perhaps only explicable in terms of her mourning, anger and outrage at being abandoned.”. Reviewed by Derral Cheatwood University of Baltimore The first question to ask is: "Why review this book in Studies in the Anthropology of Visual Communica­ tion?" Minimalism is evident as the image is stripped away of any unnecessary additions, and the backdrop of the house is dimmed into obscurity – instead, the residual bloodstains are luminous like constellations mapped across a night sky. A particular haunting image, “Evidence No. By imposing the image of death itself on the audience, Leibovitz is able to subtly steer the audience to view Sontag as how Leibovitz herself regards her, instead of leaving the echoes of death to ring with an audience that might return disturbed or even disgusted. As for a primary reason for her skirting of this matter, no more obvious one exists than her actual tendency to treat the entire lot of photographers as homogeneous, even as she appears to single out individual talent like Diane Arbus. Anyone interested in the social roles of photography … This emotional link is two-pronged. Such observations remove images of women from some sort of timeless category of fixity and suggest that what has been done can be undone, or at least made over, in the future. Our summaries and analyses are written by experts, and your questions are answered by real teachers. $3.95 (paper). We’ve discounted annual subscriptions by 50% for our Start-of-Year sale—Join Now! https://mcnamara513005.wordpress.com/.../12/17/on-photography-susan-sont… Last Updated on May 7, 2015, by eNotes Editorial. Now Susan Sontag has shown us in elegiac words how far we are enlightened or unenlightened about photography. Her role in essays such as those contained in On Photography is to evaluate the place of the medium in the human experience and, in the process of discussing that place, to explain the influence of photography and the photograph, making clear those elements of the medium that have traditionally been diverted by formalist/aesthetic approaches. It allows us to see things that would be otherwise impossible to see. Like scenes out of film noir, photography leads to the immortalization of something already immortalized – blood leaves a permanent stain even when emotions, humans, and even memory has faded away into oblivion/non-existence. It’s an excellent analysis of the far-reaching changes photographic images have made in our way of looking at the world and at ourselves. Sontag was active in writing and speaking about, or travelling to, areas of conflict, including during the Vietnam War and the Siege of Sarajevo. In this sense, voyeurism is obscured here as what is presented is not death in itself, but the subtle implications of death. 2 David Rieff, Swimming in a Sea of Death: A Son’s Memoir, (New York: Simon & Shuster, 2008), p. 150. 1). In the six essays included in the book, Susan Sontag explores the cultural, literary, historical and philosophical background of photography. Recreating the dead through effigies, statues or other monuments played on the immortality of such physical structures, in direct contrast to the mortality and limitations of the human body. As she later was to write, the argument sketched in the first essay evolved full circle through digressions and documentation into the more theoretical last essay, where the collection ended. Bruce Davidson, Susan Sontag, 1971. Last Updated on May 7, 2015, by eNotes Editorial. To deepen the interpretation and analysis of this photograph, I will be using work done by John B. Thompson and will be using his theories of the five symbolic forms (Intention, Convention, Structure, Reference and Context.) 8) features a splatter of blood glowing across the wall, draped above an unmade bed now occupied by its new inhabitants. Then James Agee’s narrative for Walker Evans’ photographs of the plight of Southern sharecroppers. This is further reinforced by the “breathing space” given to Sontag, whereby the photograph does not consist only of her image, but has also taken into account the purview of her surroundings, which gives context and the sense of Sontag resting peacefully. For her, this is an act of remembrance and a means of letting go. As everything she wrote, Susan Sontag's book on photography is brilliant. $3.95 (paper). Susan Sontag’s book “On Photography” is a classic. The organization of her collection as a whole suggests a form of storytelling, and like any story, Leibovitz begins with an introduction in writing. 1970) world. “Seeing and Being Seen: A Response to Susan Sontag’s Essays on Photography.” Soundings 68, no. 6 Elizabeth Hallam, Jenny Hockey and Glennys Howarth, Beyond the Body: Death and Social Identity, (Routledge: London), 1999. Fig. New York: Dell Pub­ lishing Company, 1977. There are three answers, each of which con­ 2). Arguably, Leibovitz’s photograph of Sontag’s death encapsulates to a greater extent, visual memento mori, not for the dead but for the living. Contemporary photographic is also highly objectifying. Her numberless paragraphs seem to say that her subject is fresh and important, but each essay is just another mug of the same old clothesline thief. Susan Sontag was born in New York City on January 16, 1933, grew up in Tucson, Arizona, and attended high school in Los Angeles. In the photographer who snaps fifty shots in hopes of one beautiful image, however grotesque or ugly the subject, Sontag has found her mentor. Yet, put into context, the thematic light, an idiosyncratic feature of Leibovitz’s photographs, filtered in from the window seems to illuminate Sontag beautifully, overcasting the weariness that Sontag presents, and in fact, seems to place her in a state of peace and restfulness. Given this surface image we judge reality too simply. Here, she explains her photography and sets the context for the juxtaposition and sifting between intimate photographs and professional portraits in her exhibition. Swinton also further illustrates this distinction between life and death through the glass box that creates both an alienation of the audience from the art work, while allowing them to also partake in this “cinematic performance”. Such paintings often depicted worldly objects such as jewellery, books, and flowers, symbolizing wealth, knowledge and beauty/life respectively, while juxtaposed against a skull, the momento mori reminder of death and the futility of life. Both text and context are still beholden to a vocabulary and set of assumptions that need to be re-examined. susan sontag on photography summary throughout history reality has been related through images and philosophers such as plato have made efforts to diminish our along with some of John.B Thompson’s other theories, with some reference to Susan Sontag’s work on photography. The many hands that are laid near his wife’s cold and placid face articulates clearly her being laid to rest – there is no question of this. Rather than mere documentation or voyeurism, it finds its place in the exhibition and marks a somber moment in the story, where death seems to be pervasive in Leibovitz’s life. 8Evidence No. The effect of this prose overload is the exact effect the author deplores most about photography: a world or cave full of pictures dispossesses reality and dissociates us from it. On Photography is a 1977 collection of essays by Susan Sontag. It is a set of essays on the "philosophy" of picture-taking and the meaning of photography in the modern (ca. Each of us is her victim as we are the camera’s. 7), the surrounding living conditions is explored in greater depth as the bloodstains are now part of the background. On Photography began with a single essay in which Susan Sontag wanted to explore some … Susan Sontag argues that photography does the same thing, appropriating reality to give people an image of it. Once inside On Photography we learn that the author is downhearted about the shutter business. While Sontag’s death does not entail with it the same abhorrent implications, a stark contrast is struck here between Leibovitz’s photograph of death and Strassheim’s pseudo-forensic photographs. Sontag does not actually write a history of cameras, but in two dozen different places we are afforded verbal snapshots of that history, while the psychology of photographs repeatedly appears on the pages. This blending in of the bloodstains is once again, a subtle obscuring of the past tragedy and asserting that continuity of life that perhaps, has also accepted death into its very essence. New York: Pantheon Books, 1980. This chapter, written in 1978, contains Berger’s overwhelmingly positive response to Sontag’s book. The purposes of forensic photography necessitate the complete detachment of emotion, opinion or other human traits from the subject in order to achieve an objective, even calculated image. But being educated by photographs is not like being educated by older, more artisanal images. While the audience is asked to participate in Leibovitz’s grief, they are also incited to “kill” Sontag. Along with the writings of Allan Sekula, Sontag’s On Photography helped to initiate a change in the ways in which photographs are made and read by challenging the ultimate value of photography as art and its role as an instrument of knowledge, communication, and culture. Also printed on gelatin silver print, this black and white photograph captures the contrast between light and dark again, through its black and white medium, with the shadowy figure of Sontag being drawn into focus against the narrow white backdrop, and the immensity of the dark, towering rocks around her. 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