Susan Sontag "On Photography" Seminar

Myself and my peers were given a week to read the first chapter of Susan Sontag's "On Photography". It was to be talked about and discussed during a seminar with myself, around 10 peers and a tutor. 

I had already read this text, or at least the first few chapters during travelling Europe over the summers of 2012 and 2013, therefore I had a bit of a head start. The session was great and we really took apart the text and talked about each major point that she made, as well as mentioning our personal views to what she said. It was a great way to learn about what the author is trying to put across, by this I mean that listening to other people views of what she had to say was really useful in making me see her points in a different light. I personally find Susan Sontag a very opinionated person, she has very strong views on everything and maybe she doesn't seem to change her views, i'm not saying this is a bad thing. Either way, this was the first seminar that I have been given the chance to attend and I will hopefully be attending many more in the future because I found the experience very worthwhile. This seminar also helped me to further bring into context my own work, one particular point in the text talked about how certain areas of social life are being destroyed in a brief span of time and how photography is a "device" which can record what is "disappearing". This quote really hit home with my are of work and it helped me to gain further enthusiasm into my own areas of interest! Below are some notes that I took down whilst reading the chapter, these are some of the points that I inputted into the seminar.

• "To collect photographs is to collect the world"
• "To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed"
• The book has been the most influential way of arranging photographs.
• Brief view of how the photograph is seen to the public and how it is displayed or reproduced.
• The camera record incriminates and justifies depending on the subject and photographer.
• "The picture may distort; but there is always a presumption that something exists, or did exist which is like whats in the picture."
• Photographs will always be influenced by each persons taste and conscience.
• Link to The Farm Security Administration Project. (Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange etc...)
• There is an aggressive implicit in every use of the camera?
• The clash between paintings and photography, how photography become a way of mass producing.
• Photography is participation not observation.
• The photograph as " perverse"
• There is distance between the photographer and the subject.
• She talks about "Loading", "Aiming" and "Shooting".
• "To photograph people is to violate them"
• Constant talk about how the camera duplicates the world at the moment"
• The sentimental use of photography for example, "A cab drivers children clipped to the visor"
• Constantly talking about WHAT a photograph is.
• A photograph is a carefully selected moment in time, moving image is a stream of under-selected images, each of which cancels the previous.
• Link to the vietnamese child running down the road from the fighting.
• "Photography is extremely powerful, is has the ability to change the world"
• "The contribution of photography always follows the naming of the event" In other words, photographs can only reenforce a notion it cannot portray the 'realness' or 'truth' of an event.
• The shock of pornography wears off after repeated viewings.
• Ethical content of photographs is fragile.
• Photographs have become part of everyday life.
• Photographs are a way of giving information to people who do not take easily to reading. EVERYONE THEN?
• "Everything exists to end in a photograph.