On Photography
By Susan Sontag
Published by Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 197

How do we take notice of, and commit to memory, the world around us? What corroborates our varied findings and experiences? Susan Sontag’s On Photography, published in 1977, is a collection of six essays that pick apart the photographic medium and unflinchingly critique its role in shaping our understanding of reality and the human experience. The essays, beginning with the acclaimed ‘In Plato’s Cave’, leisurely unwrap the many aesthetic, ethical, personal and political dimensions of the photographic image. From the opening line, “Humankind lingers unregenerately in Plato’s cave, still revelling, its age-old habit, in mere images of truth,” Sontag, like Plato, establishes images as shadows of reality and regards them with some suspicion. The book reflects on the affective work of many prominent 20th-century photographers, such as Diane Arbus, Robert Frank and Walker Evans, yet does not feature any of their images to support its arguments. The omission is owed to the author’s belief that there is an appropriate, or rather conscious, way to consume photography that involves an imposed order and viewing time. Readers rely on her descriptions and interpretation of the works, which makes for an immersive and stimulating experience.

The book exposes a society afflicted with “aesthetic consumerism”; the essay titled ‘The Image-World’ speaks of burning, that is, with every image consumed (burned) we require another and yet another, perhaps to repossess what is real and available only in transient instants. Sontag’s timely grasp of this phenomenon begs the question: could she have predicted the extent of the digital world’s reliance on reproduced images? Her contemporary, John Berger in his book Ways of Seeing cautions against the reproduction of art when it is divorced from its original context. Contrary to their appeal, images extracted from reality cannot be objective truth-tellers, they aver in their respective works. On alternate forms of expression, Sontag postulates, “While a painting or a prose description can never be other than a narrowly selective interpretation, a photograph can be treated as a narrowly selective transparency.”

Upon leafing through the book, one ponders one’s own relationship to these snapshots of seeing—if not truthful replications of our surroundings, what occurs in the process of one’s interaction with them? ‘The Heroism of Vision’, the fourth essay, tackles our cognisance of beauty. It seems only natural that what is beautiful is photographed, and even what is ugly can be so hideous that it becomes beautiful. If photography draws beauty, we must look our best all the time, we are hyper-aware of the camera and begin to “fear its disapproval.” It is the camera that dictates what ought to be seen or captured. Sontag also implies we take pictures to assure ourselves that our experiences have indeed taken place and are ascribed the appropriate characteristics; they cement our familial relationships as loving and evolving, our vacations as exotic and enjoyable, and the past as tender and nostalgic.

The essay ‘America, Seen Through Photographs, Darkly’ touches on the pursuit of photography as an avenue to stave off boredom by “colonising new experiences” which hints at the intrusive nature of the act. In fact, the camera holder is the only active participant in the process, neither the subject nor others know what he sees, only that it must be something worthwhile.

On Photography encourages critique and caution towards the photographic medium, correlating the ubiquitous photograph with consumerism, surveillance and estrangement from nature. However, the avid photographer may find comfort in knowing that Sontag did not dismiss photography as an art form. The book praises artists like Evans for his channelling of Walt Whitman’s humanism, depicting the enchanting every-day of the American experience while Lewis Hine is similarly lauded for his photographs of exploited immigrants and children. To make art with the reality of others requires an acknowledgement of privilege and class consciousness, which Sontag explains using Charles Baudelaire’s flâneur in the essay ‘Melancholy Objects’. The flâneur, a well-to-do rover, seeks to uncover and capture the downtrodden sections of society. Rich with curiosity about the exotic—a peek into “how the other side lives”—this approach inhibits true understanding of the subject or situation. Similar ethical scruples of the form, such as desensitisation to once-in-a lifetime horrors and voyeurism, are dissected throughout the book for the benefit of the photographer, empowering them to make meaningful work.

A written journey traversing the beginnings of photography in the 1840s and 1850s to the cusp of post-modernism in the 1970s has to draw from various forms of artistic expression, political and social change, as well as the perspectives of professionals, intellectuals and philosophers on the subject. Sontag’s eclectic style leaves no stone unturned; she deftly navigates the metamorphosis of the French daguerreotype in no particular order but abundant with cultural references, balanced by her valuable insights and direction. The reader can expect to be whisked from discussions on surrealistic art and vitalist literature to Western colonisation and the democratisation of experiences; not to mention the multitude of photographic projects she breaks down into intent, methodology and impact for ease of understanding. On Photography cannot be easily summarised or contained. It ruptures with discourse and staunchly defended ideas. The once-radical collection of essays is not only perennially relevant but consistently engaging. Stéphane Mallarmé said “Everything in the world exists in order to end in a book.” Sontag takes it forward in the first essay she published for the collection: “Today,” she writes, “everything exists to end in a photograph.”

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Deanne Abreo is pursuing her BA with a major in psychology from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai. 

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