
The Morals of Vision: Susan Sontag’s ‘On Photography’ Revisited (Part 1) - prismatic
https://darrencampion.com/2017/06/13/the-morals-of-vision-susan-sontags-on-photography-revisited-part-1/
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contingencies
If you are interested in alternative attempts to explain photography to a
general audience consider reading or even chipping in to the development of
the Wikibook _Modern Photography_ at
[https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Modern_Photography](https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Modern_Photography)

I really enjoyed developing
[https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Modern_Photography/The_camera](https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Modern_Photography/The_camera)

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eriknstr
> if you stood at the end of the valley when the shadows had grown long, then
> you had better run back to the cave or face the evening hunt of the local
> tigers

Is there such a thing as an evening hunt for the tigers? I'm not saying there
isn't, I just haven't heard it mentioned in any tv program about tigers.

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contingencies
Tigers like most cats are generally nocturnal hunters.

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jancsika
> And yet, the idea that the whole culture of producing and consuming
> photography – the culture of photography itself – can be scrutinised
> critically is one that we should not be so eager to discount; our age of
> ‘fake news’ and reality television politics probably needs it more than
> ever.

I'm certainly not eager to discount the idea of a broad institutional
critique. But I am eager to discount a broad institutional critique where the
methodology requires little to no hard data or even secondary sources of
research which themselves may be scrutinized to weigh the conclusions the
author puts forward.

Also, this:

> “Naïve or commercial or merely utilitarian photography,” she says, “is no
> different in kind from photography as practiced by the most gifted
> professionals: there are pictures taken by anonymous amateurs which are just
> as interesting, as complex formally, as representative of photography’s
> characteristic powers as a Stieglitz or an Evans” (OP, pg. 132.)

What does "no different in kind" mean here? I can't think of a definition that
either makes the entire statement facile or else is so obscurantist as to be
invisible.

Anyhow, it's not enough that an unknown naïve amateur can take a photograph
that is as powerful visually as an expert. That could mean the "masters" have
no clothes on, but it could equally mean that photography as a medium and
technology has a democratizing effect. Or even a little of both. But I hope
the modern human would have already known that before reading the passage.

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rwnspace
Regarding your second quote, my assumption is that she is applying the 'Death
of the Author' principle to photography. It doesn't matter who the person
behind the camera is, it only matters that what is captured and shared is
interesting. Presumably masters find their clothing in consistency and
dedication, not Bach-tier composition. That's my guess, at any rate.

