On Photography
by Susan Sontag · first published 1977
67% recommend28% neutral6% critical
Why HN recommends it
A sharp essay-length argument on how photographs shape memory, reality and attitudes toward the world; for anyone curious about photography's wider cultural effects, not just technique.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
On Photography is a 1977 collection of essays by Susan Sontag. It originally appeared as a series of essays in the New York Review of Books between 1973 and 1977. In the book, Sontag expresses her views on the history and present-day role of photography in capitalist societies as of the 1970s. Sontag discusses many examples of modern photography, among these, she contrasts Diane Arbus's work with that of Depression-era documentary photography commissioned by the Farm Security Administration. ([Wikipedia][1]) [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Photography
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…equivalent) is going to represent but a flat, skewed representation of the three-dimensional world; it's been interpreted before anyone performs any processing, computational or analog. Susan Sontag's "On Photography" is a great read on this topic for anyone marginally interested in not just photography, but art in general.
on “Super Resolution” ↗Eloquent JS, for coding, On Photography by Sontag for Photography, Anything James Baldwin for literature, Anything Angela Davis or Emma Goldman for political theory, A blank (perhaps square lined, Rhodia brand) notebook and a pack of Stabillo…
on “Ask HN: Which book can attract anyone towards your field of study?” ↗…different perspective, but seldom a sudden flash on insight. Others short reads that have changed my mind in that way include: - "The Inner Ring" by CS Lewis (https://www.lewissociety.org/innerring/) - "On Photography" by Susan Sontag (https://www.amazon.com/Photography-Susan-Sontag/dp/031242009...) - "Black Souls in White Skins?" by Steve Biko (as far as I can see only widely available as part of the Collection "I…
on “The Tyranny of Structurelessness (1970)” ↗…to do with the world outside the ego. That's a pretty terrible summary of Sontag's thesis. Maybe that's what you genuinely took away from her essay, but I can assure you there's a lot more of value in On Photography than that. It's also a rather dismissive way of taking about perhaps the most famous photographers and filmmaker of the early postmodern era, whose partner also was (and still is) an equally famous photographer.…
on “Instagram Is Ruining Vacation” ↗Susan Sontag’s “On Photography” is a mind-expanding read on this. She traces the history of photography and how it changed people. Suddenly with portable cameras, vacations became more about taking photos, which meant prioritizing…
on “Photos are too flattering now” ↗…thread; I assume nobody but you will see this. Though that might dilute what I’m about to say, given this is a public forum, I still wanted to say, emphatically, thank you. I bought a copy of Sontag’s On Photography on the back of your comment. It is one of the more worldview-changing books I have read in a long time.
on “Photos are too flattering now” ↗Since nobody here mentioned - I strongly recommend Susan Sontag's book - "On Photography" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Photography
on “Photography is not Objective, Art is a Set of Choices” ↗…together in software to create a picture like the people sitting on the log in front of the mountains? This has been a concern people have had for years. You might benefit from reading Susan Sontag's essay On Photography - https://writing.upenn.edu/library/Sontag-Susan-Photography.p... My take, as soon as you pick up a camera to capture a scene you are telling a story and incorporating your own bias. For this reason,…
on “The value of bringing a telephoto lens” ↗Grab a copy of Susan Sontag’s On Photography.
on “Supreme Court Rules Andy Warhol’s Prince Art Is Copyright Infringement” ↗What a bizarre list. Camera Lucida and On Photography are masterpieces that anyone interested in photography as an art form should read, but they don't say a lot about the lives of the artists whose work they describe. Barthes says virtually nothing about…
on “Maria Loh recommends the best books on Lives of Artists” ↗Also read On Photography, which is one of the seminal works of American art criticism and philosophy. I, too, before reading her encountered her as a reference more than a primary source and had a vague idea that she was some…
on “The Slave of Seriousness” ↗She wrote a lot of valuable stuff about American visual culture at a time when television was dominant and just before the rise of the internet. Someone else cited On Photography, and Regarding the Pain of Others is another good one.
on “The Slave of Seriousness” ↗> > Sontag > We are not talking about professional photographers here I think Sontag wrote essays which are collected in the 1977 book "On Photography" (and a followup in 2003, "Regarding the Pain of Others"). It's not specifically about professional photography, but about photography in general--family vacation pictures, crime scene photos, etc. I…
on “Classic 50mm “Normal” Lens” ↗Wim Wenders had some pretty strong words about phone photography, claiming it's no longer photography but a new medium itself [1]. "The less you have, the more creative you have to become." In On Photography, Susan Sontag argued that photography, which itself took a while to become considered an art form, gradually began to absolve painting of its duty to represent 'reality.' I can see 'phonetography' doing…
on “Photography technology has influenced what people consider a good picture” ↗This reminds me a great deal of the insights of Susan Sontag in her essay On Photography. To wit: "A way of certifying experience, taking photographs is also a way of refusing it -- by limiting experience to a search for the photogenic, by converting experience into an image, a souvenir.…
on “A life less posted” ↗