S O N T A G (1933-2004)

On Photography: Sontag asks. . . Photography: What is it? What do photographs mean to us? What does it mean to our culture to be able to take photographs? What does the act of photography itself imply? What roles do photographs play in our lives?

Photography changed: Our understanding of perception itself The number of images we see (larger image bank) The kinds of images we see (can you think of examples?). The way we see

Going Digital Sontag was writing in the pre-digial age. How has digital imagery, including the Internet and cell phone photography changed our relationship with photographs even further?

In what ways might a photo have more impact than film?

In what ways might a photo have more impact than film? Privileged moment. Still. Can be examined. Film is a sequence of images, each canceling out the one before. Film gives the sense of something happening now (even the dead come to life). Photos give the sense that something happened in the past (more pathos).

On Photography What does “In Plato’s Cave” refer to? (link)

¶1 “Humankind lingers unregenerately in Plato’s cave, in mere images of the truth. But being educated by photographs is not like being educated by older, more artisanal images. For one thing, there are a great many more images around, claiming our attention. The inventory started in 1839 and since then just about everything has been photographed, or so it seems.”

(Contd.) What does this mean? “This very insatiability of the photographic eye changes the terms of confinement in the cave, our world. In teaching us a new visual code, photographs alter and enlarge our notions of what is worth looking at and what we have the right to observe. They are a grammar and, even more importantly, an ehtics of seeing.”

Group Work See handout