Susan Sontag on Photography: How Photo Shows How We See the World
This literature review is intended to investigate photographs' relationship to the notions of reality and truth, with the idea that the photograph serves as a record of the thing photographed. The literary photographic practise is outlined by Susan Sontag on Photography ap essay. Throughout this review, I will consider what perspectives on photography has this text.
It was assumed at the start of the research that the best way of proving that reality exists is to give people a picture of it and that people think of the concept of photography as a reality that connects them rather than paintings and drawings. Susan Sontag has shown this in terms of Plato's notion the idea that people can only see the world around them as trapped in a cave and only see the world by the use of shadows. This reality exists outside the cave, but people cannot access it. Not only that, but the truth is also largely restricted to what remains within the cave and the outside world's shadow portrays traces of truth.
We are currently exposed to a large number of photographs; photographs are also pieces of truth that reveal the photographer's perception of reality. If we show pictures, we do not need to know the people in the photographs but as spectators we create an idea of reality behind them by means of a single picture and interpretation. An interesting object that reflects reality and manipulates the Truth is a photograph. A photo can be manipulated in so many ways, but because it claims to capture the reality, often it can cause the viewer to think that pictures are captured and interpreted by the photographers in their views or their feelings.
Despite the fact that Sontag describes herself being someone who cannot get enough of photographs, she declares she doesn't take them because she is afraid of becoming addicted to the activity. She does not believe the claims of photography's accuracy and authority. Recognising the world, according to Sontag, begins with refusing to take everything at face value and investigating reality. She refuses to accept the photographer's insistence that people accept a photograph as it appears and, as a result, view the world as it is represented by the photograph. In fact, there have been people who take photographs behind the cameras, and a photograph does not show everything. 'The camera lies' is a well-known statement that Sontag will mention in the book later. People furthermore lie in contexts and angles that only really show what the viewer wants to see.
Sontag also examines the role of loss in photography in her essay Melancholy Objects, in which she discusses how photography is a true surrealist art form because it creates some sort of reality. Photography allows the viewer to access lost moments in time and space, as well as the surreal experience of photographs that place alongside reality in reference to the past and the viewer's present. The camera can capture a world that no longer exists through photography. Photographs give people the illusion that they can cling to time, which is impossible. Sontag also says, 'What is true of photographs is true of the world seen photographically.'
The surrealism Sontag refers to in this part of the chapter is the separation between the time the photo was taken and when the viewers can see the photograph. She talks about how photos give the viewer the illusion they are holding time within their own hands. But more importantly time never stops moving, that even photography canât control that. Sontag also argues that the deceptive feeling people have viewing images has control over that moment in time, while the subject of that photo did exist at some point in time. That the idea of the two worlds collide in the viewers hand according to Sontag that the surreal idea of photography where reality and time come together.
The book's final essay, titled 'The Image World,' Sontag returns to the idea of the image as a representation of reality and the substitution of reality. In Sontag's view, photographs are not only a vision of reality but also a metaphor of reality. In the course of this essay, she recognises the essence of Christianity by Ludwig Feuerbach and the figurative language of Plato's cavern, stressing the fact that both men understood that people prefer the image to what they portrayed personally. Sontag describes how photography inherits its subjects and offers people a direct substitute for both things and people. Photography allows photographers to provide people with information to help interact with the world in a consumer like manner. Ultimately, it provides individuals with resources about events in addition to general experience with the event.
Within this essay Sontag refers to the first chapter saying photography depersonalises “our relation to the world” and is useful in a patronising way. Sontag contrasts the desire to know everything in an American photography with the constraints imposed on photography in china. under which parts of subjects are not photographed and only one style can be accepted directly. Sontag describes how images become a consumable object and become necessary in a capitalist society to make people purchase more. They expect, want and disappoint when people consume the images. As people consume the pictures, they expect, want and require more pictures to attempt to fulfil the 'depleted' reality. Sontag concludes that the reduction in photography, not more, would increase the value of images.
