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SUSAN SONTAG/ 2011
(  Satoshi Kinoshita )
| Series: | Prints on paper: Portraits 2 | | Medium: | Giclée on Japanese matte paper | | Size (inches): | 16.5 x 11.7 (paper size) | | Size (mm): | 420 x 297 (paper size) | | Edition size: | 25 | | Catalog #: | PP_0188 | | Description: | From an edition of 25. Signed, titled, date, copyright, edition in pencil on the reverse / Aside from the numbered edition of 5 artist's proofs and 2 printer's proofs.
"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."
- Susan Sontag
Susan Sontag -
Susan Sontag (pronounced /ˈsɒntɑːɡ/; January 16, 1933 – December 28, 2004) was an American essayist, literary and cultural theorist, icon, and political activist whose works include On Photography, Against Interpretation, The Way We Live Now, and Regarding the Pain of Others.
A new visual code:
In her essay On Photography Sontag says that the evolution of modern technology has changed the viewer in three key ways. She calls this the emergence of a new visual code.
Firstly, Sontag suggests that modern photography, with its convenience and ease, has created an overabundance of visual material. As photographing is now a practice of the masses, due to a drastic decrease of camera size and increase of ease in developing photographs, we are left in a position where “just about everything has been photographed” (Sontag, Susan, (1977), On Photography 3). We now have so many images available to us of: things, places, events and people from all over the world, and of not immediate relevance to our own existence, that our expectations of what we have the right to view, want to view or should view has been drastically affected. Arguably, gone are the days that we felt entitled to view only those things in our immediate presence or that affected our micro world; we now seem to feel entitled to gain access to any existing images. “In teaching us a new visual code, photographs alter and enlarge our notion of what is worth looking at and what we have the right to observe” (3). This is what Sontag calls a change in the “ethics of seeing” (3).
Secondly, Sontag comments on the effect of modern photography on our education, claiming that photographs “now provide most of the knowledge people have about the look of the past and the reach of the present”(4). Without photography only those few people who had been there would know what the Egyptian pyramids or the Parthenon look like, yet most of us have a good idea of the appearance of these places. Photography teaches us about those parts of the world that are beyond our touch in ways that literature can not.
Thirdly, Sontag also talked about the way in which photography desensitizes its audience. Sontag introduced this discussion by telling her own story of the first time she saw images of horrific human experience. At twelve years old, Sontag found images of holocaust camps and was so distressed by them she says “When I looked at those photographs something broke... something went dead, something is still crying” (20). Sontag argues that there was no good to come from her seeing these images as a young girl, before she fully understood what the holocaust was. For Sontag the viewing of these images has left her a degree more numb to any following horrific image she viewed, as she had been desensitized. According to this argument, “Images anesthetize” and the open accessibility to them is a negative result of photography (20).
Sontag examines the relationship between photography and reality. Photographs are depicted as a representation of realism. Sontag claimed that “such images are indeed able to usurp reality because first of all a photograph is not only an image, an interpretation of the real; it is also a trace, something directly stenciled off the real (Sontag, Susan (1982), The Image World 350). It is a resemblance of the real as the photograph becomes an extension of the subject. However, the role of the photograph has changed, as copies destroy the idea of an experience. The image has altered to convey information and become an act of classification. Sontag highlights the notion that photographs are a way of imprisoning reality- making the memory stand still. Ultimately images are surveillance of events that trigger the memory. In modern society, photographs are a form of recycling the real. When a moment is captured it is assigned a new meaning as people interpret the image in their own manner. Sontag claims that images desensitize the reality, as people's perceptions are distorted by the construction of the photograph. However this has not stopped people from consuming images; there is still a demand for more photographs.
Sontag observed some uses of photography, “Photography has become one of the principal devices for experiencing something, for giving an appearance of participation” (Sontag,1977 10), such as memorizing and providing evidence. She also states that “to collect photographs is to collect the world.” (Sontag,1997 3)
Sontag believes that photography implies that we know about the world if we accept it as the camera records it. She states that photography has ‘become one of the principal devices for experiencing something, for giving an appearance of participation’.[15] She refers to photographs as memento mori, where to take a photograph is to participate in another person’s mortality, vulnerability and mutability. The progression from written word to an image shifts the interpretation from the author to the receiver. Sontag believes however that ‘photographed images do not seem to be statements about the world so much as pieces of it, miniatures of reality that anyone can make or acquire’.[16] It is a slice in time and in effect, is more memorable than moving images for example, videos. It fills the gaps in our mind of the past and present.[17] Even though photography has such effect, there are limits to photographic knowledge of the world. The limitations are that it can never be interpreted ethical or political knowledge.[18] It will always be some kind of sentimentalism, whether cynical or humanist. [18]
Works:
Fiction
(1963) The Benefactor ISBN 0-385-26710-X
(1967) Death Kit ISBN 0-312-42011-0
(1977) I, etcetera (Collection of short stories) ISBN 0-374-17402-4
(1991) The Way We Live Now (short story) ISBN 0-374-52305-3
(1992) The Volcano Lover ISBN 1-55800-818-7
(1999) In America ISBN 1-56895-898-6 (National Book Award for fiction in 2000)
Plays
(1991) "A Parsifal" [one-act play, first published in _Antaeus_ 67 (1991): 180-185.]
(1993) Alice in Bed Library of Congress catalog card number 93-71280
(1999) "Lady from the Sea" [adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's play of the same name; first published in _Theater_ 29.1 (1999): 89-91.]
Nonfiction
Collections of essays
(1967) Against Interpretation ISBN 0-385-26708-8 (includes Notes on "Camp")
(1969) Styles of Radical Will ISBN 0-312-42021-8
(1980) Under the Sign of Saturn ISBN 0-374-28076-2
(2001) Where the Stress Falls ISBN 0-374-28917-4
(2002) Regarding the Pain of Others ISBN 0-374-248583
(2007) At the Same Time: Essays & Speeches ISBN 0-374-10072-1 (edited by Paolo Dilonardo and Anne Jump, with a foreword by David Rieff)
Sontag also published nonfiction essays in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, The Nation, Granta, Partisan Review and the London Review of Books.
Monographs
(1977) On Photography ISBN 0-374-22626-1
(1978) Illness as Metaphor ISBN 0-394-72844-0
(1988) AIDS and Its Metaphors (a continuation of Illness as Metaphor) ISBN 0-374-10257-0
(2003) Regarding the Pain of Others ISBN 0-374-24858-3
Films
(1969) Duett för kannibaler (Duet for Cannibals)
(1971) Broder Carl (Brother Carl)
(1974) Promised Lands
(1983) Unguided Tour AKA Letter from Venice
Other
(2004) Contribution of phrases to Fischerspooner's third album "Odyssey."
(2002) Liner notes for Patti Smith album Land.
(2008) Reborn: Journals and Notebooks 1947-1963
Books and articles on Susan Sontag
Sontag and Kael by Craig Seligman ISBN 1-58243-311-9.
The Din in the Head. Essays by Cynthia Ozick ISBN 978-0-618-47050-1 See Forward: On Discord and Desire.
Conversations with Susan Sontag. Edited by Leland Poague ISBN 0-87805-833-8 Susan Sontag in her own words.
Susan Sontag: The Elegiac Modernist by Sohnya Sayres ISBN 0-415-90031-X
Swimming in a Sea of Death by David Rieff A memoir about Susan Sontag's death by her son.
Notes on Sontag by Phillip Lopate
Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag by Sigrid Nunez
References:
3. ^ See Susan Sontag, 'Literature is Freedom' in At the Same Time, ed. P. Dilonardo and A. Jump, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007, p.206 and Morton White, A Philosopher's Story, Pennsylvania University Press, 1999, p.148. See also C. Rollyson and L. Paddock Susan Sontag: The Making of an Icon, W. W. Norton, 2000, pp.39-40.
4. ^ See C. Rollyson and L. Paddock Susan Sontag: The Making of an Icon, W. W. Norton, 2000, p.39 and J. McLaughlin 'Putting Her Body Into It' at
15. ^ Susan Sontag, On Photography, Penguin, page 10
16. ^ Susan Sontag, On Photography, Penguin, page 3
17. ^ Susan Sontag, On Photography, Penguin, page 23
18. ^ a b Susan Sontag, On Photography, Penguin, page 24
20. ^ Christopher Hitchens
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Sontag
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