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On Photography

by Sontag, Susan
On Photography

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ISBN13: 9780312420093
ISBN10: 0312420099
Condition: Standard


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Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments

Winner of the National Book Critics' Circle Award for Criticism.

One of the most highly regarded books of its kind, On Photography first appeared in 1977 and is described by its author as “a progress of essays about the meaning and career of photographs.” It begins with the famous “In Plato's Cave”essay, then offers five other prose meditations on this topic, and concludes with a fascinating and far-reaching “Brief Anthology of Quotations.”

Review

"Every page of On Photography raises important and exciting questions about its subject and raises them in the best way." The New York Times Book Review

Review

"A book of great importance and originality....All future discussion or analysis of the role of photography in the affluent mass-media societies are now bound to begin with her book." John Berger

Review

"Not many photographs are worth a thousand of [Susan Sontag's] words." Robert Hughes, Time

Review

"After Sontag, photography must be written about not only as a force in the arts, but as one that is increasingly powerful in the nature and destiny of our global society." Newsweek

Review

"On Photography is to my mind the most original and illuminating study of the subject." Calvin Trillin, The New Yorker

About the Author

Susan Sontag was the author of four novels, including In America, which won the 2000 National Book Award for Fiction; a collection of stories; several plays; and seven works of nonfiction. She died in New York City on December 28, 2004.

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Average customer rating 3 (2 comments)

`
Walter , April 12, 2022 (view all comments by Walter)
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.

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Lindsay Waite , August 22, 2012 (view all comments by Lindsay Waite)
Many of us take a countless number of photos, and with Facebook and other websites, we also now view many more photos than in the past. Susan Sontag thoughtfully explores the meaning of photos and photography in a series of essays published over years in "The New York Review of Books" in the 1970s. The book opens with "Plato's Cave," one of my favorite topics and certainly relevant to photography. She posits: "Humankind lingers unregenerately in Plato's cave, still reveling, its age-old habit, in mere images of the truth." (p.3) Interesting, as she writes in these early years about the growing popularity of photography, she anticipates an "image-choked world." (p.15) This series of essays explores the value of photos in showing us places we will never see in person (creating a "substitute world" -p.162), its role in desensitizing viewers to horrors, and its essence of being an image of reality - not reality (Plato's cave). Sontag analyzes cultural and historical views of the nature of photography, and explores how certain filmmakers captured the art of image-making. This is a fascinating collection. Her thoughts resonate even more loudly today.

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Product Details

ISBN:
9780312420093
Binding:
Trade Paperback
Publication date:
08/25/2001
Publisher:
MACMILLAN PUBLISHING SERVICES
Pages:
224
Height:
.62IN
Width:
5.53IN
Thickness:
.75
Number of Units:
1
Copyright Year:
2001
Series Volume:
632
Author:
Susan Sontag
Author:
Susan Sontag
Subject:
Criticism -- Theory.
Subject:
Criticism
Subject:
Photography-Theory and Criticism
Subject:
Photography, Artistic

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