The limit of photographic knowledge of the world is that, while it can goad conscience, it can, finally, never be ethical or political knowledge. The knowledge gained through still photographs will always be some kind of sentimentalism, whether cynical or humanist. It will be a knowledge at bargain prices—a semblance of knowledge, a semblance of wisdom; as the act of taking pictures is a semblance of appropriation, a semblance of rape. The very muteness of what is, hypothetically, comprehensible in photographs is what constitutes their attraction and provocativeness.

Just as the camera is a sublimation of the gun, to photograph someone is a sublimated murder—a soft murder, appropriate to a sad, frightened time.

¿Hasta qué punto puede mentir una cámara? «Aprendemos a vernos fotográficamente», nos dice Susan Sontag en la obra que le dio fama mundial. La cámara ha tenido una importancia trascendental en la relación del hombre contemporáneo con la realidad y consigo mismo. El vivaz acercamiento de la autora a este apasionante tema incluye perspectivas que nos llevan de Platón a Melville, de la historia de la pintura a la del cine, pasando por la literatura, la publicidad o la sociología. Sobre la fotografía es el libro más emblemático de una escritora que se ha caracterizado siempre por el compromiso con lo más candente de su tiempo. La prosa magnética, la riqueza de puntos de vista, y una inteligencia que brilla en cada párrafo y despierta interesantes preguntas, son sólo algunos de los alicientes que encontrará el lector de este libro.

quite dated in parts, esp. her writing on china, but otherwise strikingly relevant. certainly got me to think about how i look at & take photography. ( )

This is the worst book I've read about photography. It isn't even about photography, it is about Susan Sontag consistently misunderstanding photographs. It isn't intellectual, either. It is her emotional responses to the shallowest possible reading of photographs.

The defining moment is in the appendix of quotations, the only good part of the book. The first quote is from the notebooks of William Henry Fox Talbot, one of the earliest photographers. He wrote, "Make picture of kaleidoscope." This idea of photography as painting with light is utterly outside the simplistic readings of photography in Sontag's book.

Don't waste your time. Instead, find a copy of [b:READING PHOTOGRAPHS|8248602|READING PHOTOGRAPHS|Jonathan Bayer|/assets/nocover/60x80.png|13096229] or [b:Diana & Nikon: Essays on Photography|63136|Diana & Nikon Essays on Photography|Janet Malcolm|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1312053000s/63136.jpg|2903402] or read the essays on photographers in Janet Malcom's latest, [b:Forty-one False Starts: Essays on Artists and Writers|16059462|Forty-one False Starts Essays on Artists and Writers|Janet Malcolm|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1352781376s/16059462.jpg|21858277]. ( )

Permbledhje esesh per imazhet fotografike.