On Photography

by Susan Sontag

The further back we go in history, as E. H. Gombrich has observed, the less sharp is the distinction between images and real things; in primitive societies, the thing and its image were simply two different, that is, physically distinct, manifestations of the same energy or spirit.

photography an incomparable tool for deciphering behavior, predicting it, and interfering with it.

maps of the real.

The primitive notion of the efficacy of images presumes that images possess the qualities of real things, but our inclination is to attribute to real things the qualities of an image.

form—these are themselves ways of experiencing reality as a set of appearances, an image.

people in industrialized countries seek to have their photographs taken—feel that they are images, and are made real by photographs.

The Chinese resist the photographic dismemberment of reality. Close-ups are not used. Even the postcards of antiquities and works of art sold in museums do not show part of something; the object is always photographed straight on, centered, evenly lit, and in its entirety.

We have a modern notion of embellishment—beauty is not inherent in anything; it is to be found, by another

As we make images and consume them, we need still more images; and still more. But images are not a treasure for which the world must be ransacked; they are precisely what is at hand wherever the eye falls.

The possession of a camera can inspire something akin to lust. And like all credible forms of lust, it cannot be satisfied: first, because the possibilities of photography are infinite; and, second, because the project is finally self-devouring.

the association and the sense of nearness involved in the thing

You may see and be affected by other people’s ways, you may even use them to find your own, but you will have eventually to free yourself of them.

to preserve life in the act of living.

The camera is a fluid way of encountering that other reality. —Jerry N. Uelsmann

“Photography concentrates one’s eye on the superficial. For that reason it obscures the hidden life which glimmers through the outlines of things like a play of light and shade. One can’t catch that even with the sharpest lens. One has to grope for it by feeling