- Publisher
- Picador
- Published
- 1977
- Shelf
- photography: Criticism
- ISBN
- 9780312420093
Criticism
On Photography
Susan Sontag
Six essays on what happens to the world once everything in it is being photographed.
Why read it
Sontag argues that a photograph is an act of acquisition, and that photographing something can be a way of declining to intervene in it. The case has only sharpened as the number of cameras went from millions to billions. It is the ethical floor under every image you will ever commission.
Why own it
There are no photographs in it, which is both the joke and the method. The writing has to make you see. It rewards re-reading at different points in a career, and the essays are short enough to take one at a time.
Who it is for
Art directors, photographers, and anyone who publishes pictures of other people.
Reading order
Book 4 of 6 in the photography reading order. See all 6
Read nextCamera LucidaRoland BarthesBarthes asks the viewer's question instead, why one photograph moves him, and names the two layers at work, studium and punctum.Read before thisThe Americans
Opens a search on AbeBooks, a network of independent and antiquarian sellers, which is where a good part of this shelf has to be found, because it is out of print.
Read next
Chosen because they argue with this one, not because a machine noticed they share a category.
Also on the·photography shelf