The limit of photographic knowledge of the world is that, while it can goad conscience, it can, finally, never be ethical or political knowledge. The knowledge gained through still photographs will always be some kind of sentimentalism, whether cynical or humanist. It will be a knowledge at bargain prices—a semblance of knowledge, a semblance of wisdom; as the act of taking pictures is a semblance of appropriation, a semblance of rape. The very muteness of what is, hypothetically, comprehensible in photographs is what constitutes their attraction and provocativeness.

Just as the camera is a sublimation of the gun, to photograph someone is a sublimated murder—a soft murder, appropriate to a sad, frightened time.

quite dated in parts, esp. her writing on china, but otherwise strikingly relevant. certainly got me to think about how i look at & take photography. ( )

This is the worst book I've read about photography. It isn't even about photography, it is about Susan Sontag consistently misunderstanding photographs. It isn't intellectual, either. It is her emotional responses to the shallowest possible reading of photographs.

The defining moment is in the appendix of quotations, the only good part of the book. The first quote is from the notebooks of William Henry Fox Talbot, one of the earliest photographers. He wrote, "Make picture of kaleidoscope." This idea of photography as painting with light is utterly outside the simplistic readings of photography in Sontag's book.

Don't waste your time. Instead, find a copy of [b:READING PHOTOGRAPHS|8248602|READING PHOTOGRAPHS|Jonathan Bayer|/assets/nocover/60x80.png|13096229] or [b:Diana & Nikon: Essays on Photography|63136|Diana & Nikon Essays on Photography|Janet Malcolm|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1312053000s/63136.jpg|2903402] or read the essays on photographers in Janet Malcom's latest, [b:Forty-one False Starts: Essays on Artists and Writers|16059462|Forty-one False Starts Essays on Artists and Writers|Janet Malcolm|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1352781376s/16059462.jpg|21858277]. ( )

Permbledhje esesh per imazhet fotografike.

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