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 enlarge | Author: Susan Sontag
Publisher: Picador
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
Buy New: $7.33
You Save: $6.67 (48%)
New (37) Used (46) Collectible (2) from $7.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  24 reviews
Sales Rank: 32155
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 224
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.7
ISBN: 0312420099
Dewey Decimal Number: 770.1
EAN: 9780312420093
ASIN: 0312420099
Publication Date: August 25, 2001
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Bought, but never used.
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| Customer Reviews:
 so very boring and arrogant September 24, 2006
6 out of 26 found this review helpful
I was forced to read this drivel for a graduate photo program. God I wanted to kill myself and quit photography by the time I was finished with it.
If you want to read great photographic essays try Bill Jay's work. Amazing, insightful and filled with a sense of humor.
 On Photography is Recanted in Regarding the Pain of Others July 20, 2006
7 out of 12 found this review helpful
Susan recants many of the things she says in On Photography in her book Regarding the Pain of Others published in 2003.
Has Susan Sontag ever taken a picture? April 9, 2006
63 out of 78 found this review helpful
I opened this book very neutrally--I had never heard anything about Susan Sontag except her name, in a preface to an Annie Leibovitz book. I still can't believe some of the things I read. Sontag mentions in the foreword that she has an "obsession" with photography. I would argue that she has an obsession with resenting photography.
She begins by comparing a camera to a gun and the act of taking a picture to rape. To a certain point, I can understand this--being photographed is a very self-conscious experience. But somehow, I think rape victims would laugh at this comparision. Self-consciousness is not exactly rape. Also, she seems to believe that all photography is taken completely without the consent of the subject(s); they are innocent victims being raped by guns. The last time I checked, most of the photographers she mentions (Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Edward Weston, Julia Margaret Cameron) took pictures only with express permission, and many (Eugene Atget, Ansel Adams, etc.) did not take pictures of people at all. Almost all good pictures, with the exception of Henri Cartier-Bresson type photography, requires tacit consent between photographer and subject.
Sontag's resentment seems to come mostly from the resentment generated by photography's replacement of writing in description. Specifically, she says that whereas photograpy "steals" the pain of others, writing uses only one's own pain. This is funny, since I remember reading about how Jane Austen's neighbors complained because their lives were being stolen for her books. Ever since the art of storytelling began writers and storytellers have been "stealing" other people's lives, their pain, etc. Fitzgerald used Zelda's insanity just as David Bailey photographed Marie Helvin. I believe that the art of writing and the art of photography are incredibly similar, and Sontag sounds very sour grapes. How is Strand's photographing the famous "Blind Woman" different from Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood?"
My biggest objection to Sontag, however, is her lack of either proof or explanation. She simply states opinions as if they were facts, and then stops. For example, according to Sontag, Weston is now regarded as antiquated and cliche. Really? Somehow I thought, considering the worth of his work, his exhibitions in museums, and the wealth of books devoted to him, as well as his inclusion in every basic photography class, that he was still very highly regarded. I'm sure that Sontag regards him as antiquated and cliche, but this is very different from the "everyone" she generally to be present and in full agreement with her.
Sontag also concentrates exclusively on one genre and attacks photography as a whole through that genre. Diane Arbus's photos are apparently taking horrible advantage of everyone pictured in them, and are freakish visions of a bleak world--therefore all photographs in the world are taking horrible advantage and are freakish visions of a bleak world. I can understand why some people find Arbus's photos terribly offensive, but I think only the extremely deluded would use her as representative of all photography.
One last aspect of Sontag's book, which I found the most offensive, is her assumption that a picture is stealing the pain of others and, in a sense, profiting from it artistically. This is despite her inclusion in her "Anthology of Quotations" of Richard Avedon's interview where he stated that the pictures he took of other people were more about him than about them. Everyone who has ever practiced photography with any passion can testify to the truth of this statement, hence my conclusion that Sontag has probably never really picked up a camera. Look at Avedon's pictures of a tortured Marilyn Monroe, and then read Arthur Miller's "After the Fall," which describes a tortured and pill-popping Marilyn Monroe. There is very little difference, except that in Avedon's pictures Monroe still retains some amount of dignity, whereas in Miller's play she becomes a demon of hysteria and cruelty. In the end, although I am both a photographer and a writer, I would say that writing has ten times the power of misrepresentation and "stealing the pain of others" than does photography.
 a must read if you're an art photographer January 4, 2006
9 out of 14 found this review helpful
This is a great book on art photography. It is well written and easy to read. There are not many books on photography worth reading and this is one which is worth your time. Most photography books are all about technique - this book explores a lot of deep areas which leave you thinking about your work in a light you might have not considered which might allow you to chart some new areas to explore with your work while being able to think critically about some things you probably had never considered.
It would seem that the people who wrote the negative reviews didn't make it past the first essay in the book. I agree that there are a few comical examples in the book, but they make logical sense and have some compelling arguments. Dismissing a strong series of essays which amount to a couple hundred pages on the basis of 3 sentences which you aren't personally comfortable with is folly. It is akin to not seeing the forest for the trees.
The book is a collection of seven essays which speak of the function, impact, and meaning photography has in our society. It is thought provoking and rather interesting. I picked up a cheap used copy because john berger was quoted as praising the book on the back cover. I've read a couple of his books and thought if he vouched for it - then it might be worth checking out.
The downside of this book is that since the essays were written in the early seventies some things are dated. Not that this negates the good things in the book.
My only other complaint is that in order to understand the essays you have to have a familiarity with a lot of famous photographers from the past. I was familiar with the photographers referenced in the essays and subsequently i didn't think the analysis and thoughts were absurd like the other reviewers did. I believe it would have been better if the author would have made her points without the understanding of them hinging upon a familiarity with some famous photographer's works. (not that she picked anything obscure - or that any relatively serious photographer shouldn't be familiar with, but it would have added a more universal appeal to the book).
This might be one of the best books on photographic ideology that i have read to date. I would recommend it to anyone who is trying to seriously pursue photography as art. I would also recommend reading John Berger. As with any book like this you should go into it with an open mind and a willingness to try and understand what the author is saying. I'm not sure why someone would buy a book like this and get hung up on some minor analogies in the first 20 pages without placing them into the context which they were presented.
Go in with an interest in photography as art and have an open mind you will not be disappointed.
 Crazy like a loon December 30, 2004
34 out of 97 found this review helpful
Sontag represents a certain type of "intellectual" who is - thankfully - becoming increasingly rare in the world of google and broadband. As exemplified by Descartes (I think, therefore I am), this is the school of people who think that truth can be discovered solely through rumination - without doing any research, without experimentation, without any investigation of the world outside of your skull. It is pure subjectivity - gloriously self-referential and egotistic, completely self-contained and titannically self-satisfied. What Sontag's writings are about are Sontag - not the world as it is (and which can easily be fact checked) but the world as seen through the coke bottle lens of Sontag's ego and self. Sontag would hate the comparison but she is the leftist equivalent of the medieval christian mystic - the world outside of her own mind doesn't matter and facts have no weight. This is what enabled her - in one of the most egregious public acts of heartlessness in the last one hundred years - to praise the 9/11 terrorists for bravery while the World Trade Center was still smoldering and bodies were still being dragged from the debris. This was like praising the Nazi concentration camp managers for efficiency and thoroughness. Having distanced herself from humanity and decency with her warped and unbalanced intellect, the stunned response to her statements probably bewildered her completely. No matter as her crazed statements had plenty of precedents in her previous writings. She took the very cheap, easy, and elitist high road of condemning every wrong in the world - without ever offering any solutions and always, always, condemning the USA for actually trying to do something about these problems rather than just word process away safely in her study surrounded by the works of Verlaine, Rimbaud, and Genet.
In Photography, Sontag is at the Acme of her (witch) craft. She thinks (and enough critics seemed to have agreed with her) that a well written sentence implies veracity as if the good sentence was a litmus test for truth; as if grammar and a good thesaurus conferred reliability, sanity, or common sense. It doesn't. She'll be forgotten. I think she would have appreciated that - joining the obscure writers that few people read, enjoyed, or valued. She was too elitist to have enjoyed it very much if she actually was embraced by the masses.
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