Week Two - Independent Study
Reading Response Draft Two
“Humankind lingers unregenerately in Plato’s cave, still reveling, its age-old habit, in mere images of the truth” is the line which opens the chapter ‘In Plato’s Cave’ from Susan Sontag’s ‘On Photography.’ In this chapter, Sontag compares photography and its use in the world to Plato’s Analogy of the cave. I think her main aim in this text is to deconstruct the perception of photos as reality or a realistic representation of reality. Sontag goes on to write, "Even when photographers are most concerned with mirroring reality, they are still haunted by tacit imperatives of taste and conscience". I agree with her here, there is inherent power and control in the act of taking a photo. Not to mention the numerous ways to affect a photos perception through post-processing and how the photo is presented. I also agree with Sontag when she writes, "To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed". I remember in my experience of taking street portraits how difficult a line it is to ride. Using him to fill a narrative point in my zine. Old man, religious jacket, fish and chip shop.
I think also to Vietnam war photo... and Warhols' death and destruction...
"A photograph - any photograph - seems to have a nice innocent, and therefore nice accurate, relation to visible reality" Sontag, 6
"Without a politics, photographs of the slaughter-beach of history will most likely be experienced as, simply, unreal or as a demoralising emotional blow." Sontag, 19
"Like a car, a camera is sold as a predatory weapon - one that's as automated as possible, ready to spring. Sontag, 14
"Its as simple as turning the ignition key or pulling the trigger" Sontag 14
"To Photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed" Sontag 14
She does this by recontextualizing photography through the lens of art, society, experience and ethics. While also examining the place photography has in the world, the use of photography in everyday life, the act of taking a photo (and of having your photo taken) and the role of the photographer. Through exploring photography through such varied lenses, I think she is successful in her aim. I loved this text.
One interesting point Susan uses to explore this is the active role a photographer has in taking photographs, ‘Even when photographers are most concerned with mirroring reality, they are still haunted by tacit imperatives of taste and conscience’. Though this is I think she is saying that no matter the intentions of a photographer, through the act of taking a photo, reality is tainted by the mere fact that they have chosen to take a photo, taken out the camera, lined up the shot and triggered the shutter. By doing so a photographer has decided that this moment alone is worth recording (With this exposure, under this light and with this framing). ‘’To photograph to appropriate the thing photographed’
Paragraph 2 – Photo as familial artifact
Talk about personal experience of family photos
As photographs give people an imaginary possession of a past that is unreal, they also help people to take possession of space in which they are insecure
All photographs are ‘memento mori.’ To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to times relentless melt
The sense of the unattainable that can be evoked by photographs feeds directly into the erotic feelings of those for whom desirability is enhanced by distance
The Leica 1(A) was the first commercially available Leica 35mm camera. The Leica, designed by Oscar Barnack, was announced in 1924 and sold to the public in 1925. The Leica was an immediate success and was responsible for popularizing 35mm film photography.
Popularized 35mm film photography
Made photography affordable
Portable – easy to take photos anywhere in the world
