O No photography. actually impossible to translate accurately into English. On photography, photography, tried to photograph ... a mixture of all these meanings. Because if there's something about what he thought and wrote Sontag with love, passion and skill was on Photography. Sontag is a hidden, or at least the past because this book contains six essays published between 1973 and 1977, treated photography as art, from multiple facets and aspects, that just now quoted. And it is really a strange phenomenon, that of photography. We do not realize the fact photo because we are immersed in it, it is impossible to regard our modern society without the photograph, in each and every one of the meanings. As shown Sontag, the pioneers of photography were already raised the issues that haunt us still photographers, dual issues always, locked in the continuing dilemma of art technique, black and white or color, beauty or ugliness, reality or imagination.
We have learned that what appears in the picture is real and easier to believe, but we also know how easy it is tweaked a photograph, not only in the laboratory. A simple frame, the choice to include and exclude certain subjects and objects through the viewfinder, the effect of choosing a focal length and aperture selected, give photographers the immense power of telling a reality, but distort an event as elegant as possible, counting only the part that interests your purposes . Thus, current documentary photographers have tried, unsuccessfully, not to influence the subjects of his pictures, when in fact made you decide to take a picture is a choice by the subjectivity and bias.
photographers Another school of thought in the pure image, as it is, taken from nature and showing the highest expression of beauty. But then again, with the photograph found that beauty lies in the most cotidinano and simple, even in the most horrific and apocalyptic. The photograph shows the painting that anything can be photographed, which can be an artistic element performing any thing. And we appreciate the beauty of an everyday street scene, the simplicity of a fallen leaf, but also the power of the image as a tool for social revulsion. War, oppression, dictatorship, they face hundreds, thousands of pictures of complaint, transforming photojournalism in a power of the press. Many fashion photographers were lovers of the most ruthless social photography, which shows the greatest cruelty of man. And surprisingly, it are natural.
is difficult to find in the book Sontag's final opinion on photographers, sometimes considered predators and vampires of the spirit of things photographed (as feared Balzac), and others such as reporters from the harshness of the species herself human, and social validity of the photographic document. Subsequently, Sontag says that society is already "vaccinated" against social photography, and that a war or one more death in the paper does not affect in the least consciousness. In fact, it seems that criticized the passivity of the photographer before the picture taken, as if it were responsible for the events or misfortunes caught on the machine.
Sontag's reflections are sometimes meditations on the photographic plan of photographers as diverse as Diane Arbus and Ansel Adams, and again reflect the duality of the picture. My knowledge of art history are not so deep to match its view that photography freed painting from the duty of the reproduction of reality, opening the way to Impressionism. But I can not agree on his statement about the success of amateur photography . According to Sontag, amateur photographers are mainly from industrialized countries, where labor is strong discipline. Used photography as a job to do during the holidays. Thus, the Japanese, Americans and Germans can use their free time doing something supposedly useful. Sontag does not fall into that camera equipment is usually expensive, and that these countries are precisely the richest in the world. Sontag does not appreciate a match between these fans and the location of the main business of photographic material.
do not think the common man's obsession for photography comes from no alignment or pattern intended for industrial societies. Capturing images is to capture memories, stop time, move the old age. We return to our childhood, rejuvenate tens of years by reviewing a few old photographs. Sontag is wrong on the primary motivation of the amateur, but guesses, in part, to consider absurd the obligation to photograph everything they have some fans. Sontag
other contrasts, and meditate correctly, the way we think of great photographers, mostly Americans, and shows that each of them took pictures in a different way, with sometimes conflicting intentions, coming back into the duality that pervades the entire book. It also examines the strange relationship between surrealism, the less realistic artistic movements in photography, art, more realistic, indicating how both, not just try it, removed the consideration of art and artistic piece. The latest essay contains a disquisition on the provision to the photograph of Chinese pubelo fully consider partial and outdated, but maybe I'm wrong.
latter article
1977. Although it mentions the presence of electronic video and image, I know the opinion it would have on the digital photography phenomenon, which has been a considerable lowering of the photographic material and a quick and easy access to the captured image: the computer. But in this world of digital photography, which has cornered to traditional chemical photography a few romantic artists, still enduring the dual issues that Sontag reflected in its articles. Because photography is not captured by the technique, despite being the only gear you need a machine to its existence. Of course, adding a further dilemma: digital or analog?
The popularization of the camera, which is incorporated into our lives in many electronic devices has pushed photography to new challenges and ideas, new ideas and thoughts. If anyone can be a photographer today, anyone can be an artist, and make visible art that everyone is as simple as posting photographs online. Currently, anyone with half a team photo (less than 500 euros) can become professional through microstock agencies : websites that sell pictures throughout the world. Unfortunately, we no longer have among us to think Sontag acidly agenda on it.
Despite the great impact it had at the time of publication, the book has been accused of date, to Sontag not to be a photographer and therefore not fully know the problem, and literary exercises rather than tests artistic criticism. Just is cited trials in modern books of photographic criticism. However, I think the book is a powerful approach, partial and unbalanced but tenacious, reflection on the photographic act as a whole.
Sontag, also trapped in her sexual duality, was linked romantically to the famous photographer Annie Leibovitz , relationship and only recently recognized just proclaimed. His obsession with photography, all photographs, could also change her mind about the cruelty of the photographer. In his latest book published in his lifetime, Regarding the Pain of Others (2004), speaks of photography war and seems to refute his views on the inability to move the cruelty photographed. Another strange play on words, considering the pain of others, watching the pain of others ...
