In Plato’s Cave

Revisiting Susan Sontag’s On Photography, after having not read it for many years. Here are some notes from the chapter titled In Plato’s Cave. A lot of the points raised relate to my current photography project, particularly those regarding photography being a ‘pseudo-presence,’ and photographs being ‘invitations to deduction, speculation, and fantasy.’

• ‘To collect photographs is to collect the world.’ p.3.
  
• ‘To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed.’ p.4.
• Writing and painting are perceived as ‘statements.’ Photographs are not statements but ‘pieces of the world,’ as they have a sense of truth to them. They are ‘miniatures of reality.’ p.4.
• Photobooks - cannot control the order that the images are viewed in, or the time spent viewing each image. p.5.
• Photographs furnish evidence. ‘Proof that a given thing happened.” p.5.
• Photographs are an interpretation of the world- includes photographer’s bias, opinion, choices in framing etc. p.6-7.
• ‘Photographs give people an imaginary possession of a past that is unreal.’ p.9.
• Camera provides a ‘process’ for travel. p.10.
         - Stop, shoot, move on.
         - Put the camera between self and experience.
         - Appeals to ruthless work ethic (Germans, Japanese) as it imitates work but is ‘fun.’

• Taking photos ‘levels the meaning of all events.’ p.11.
• Event ends but picture still exists –> immortality of the event. p 11.
• ‘The person who intervenes cannot record. The person who records cannot intervene.’ p.12.
• Photography encourages whatever is happening to keep happening. p.12.
• Camera as a weapon. Predatory.  p.14.
• ‘A photograph is a pseudo-presence and a token of absence.’ p.16.
• ‘Photographs cannot create a moral position, but they can reinforce one.’ p.17.
• We can become numb to shock value of photographs. Eg: repeated exposure to war photographs makes the subject feel less real. Makes it remote, “it’s only a photograph.” p.21.
• ‘Photographs, which cannot themselves explain anything, are inexhaustible invitations to deduction, speculation, and fantasy.’ p.23.
• ‘Having an experience becomes identical to taking a photograph of it.’ p.24.

Sontag, S, 2001, On Photography, 1st edn, Penguin, London.