Every being has a shadow, but what if one day you looked down and had two? Then the next day you had five? Then ten? Would you start to lose sight of the real you? You knew that the first shadow did not epitomize who you are. Do you lose this certainty as the number of shadows begins to grow? Sixty years ago, almost every photograph was memorable and had a meaning. Photos were so expensive that no one would waste their money on a pointless image. But when, similar to the hypothetical shadows, the number of images began to grow, what was the end result? Each photograph acts as a shadow of the subject, adding a detail to what the viewer knows about them. Sometimes, there are enough shadows that the viewer believes they understand the object without ever seeing it. But what happens when you are the object? Can someone know your essence from seeing your shadow… even thousands of times? The growing frequency of images in our society has been exponential throughout history; therefore the ubiquity of photos must have some consequences on society. What are the differences between a society that uses their eyes to capture remember their own images and create their own perceptions versus our society—where one has to sort through an abundance of images and overcome the notion that they comprehend objects that they have never seen with their own eyes. Susan Sontag, noted writer and critical essayist, addresses the consequences that the profusion of photographic images has caused in our society.
“The disconcerting ease with which photographs can be taken, the inevitable even when inadvertent authority of the camera’s result, suggest a very tenuous relation to knowing…The older generation of photographers described photography as a heroic effort of attention, as ascetic discipline, a mystic receptivity to the world which required that the photographer pass through a cloud of unknowing” (“Photographic Evangels” 115-116).
A loss has occurred in the decades past. Starting out as a society with few but very memorable photos we have transitioned -- thanks to Instagram, Facebook, and other new technologies-- to a society with millions of photos that even the photographer probably does not remember. Society previously had emotional investment photographs, instead of just skimming over one of five million pictures. Sontag succinctly illuminates this loss for her reader through her use of long, fluid sentences, academic vocabulary and many commas. She juxtaposes lists in order to effectively compare and contrast the two time periods. The effect of these commas, in addition to her words, creates the fluid effect that acts as a powerful force deconstructing and creating new definitions. The end result is the reader understanding fully what the loss, caused by the recent ubiquity of photographs, truly was. It was reduction of the strength of the emotional connection between the photograph and its viewer. An image was truly a photograph when it was authentic (meaning that it was taken for the sake of being more than just an image).
Susan Sontag’s On Photography, published in 1973complicates the mainstream notions of photography, --- it is a critical study, which applies a sociological, political and psychological framework to photography. Through words of critique, Sontag purposefully disintegrates the readers’ preconceptions of photography. This collection of essays is written in the manner of an academic critique --- it is dense and uses challenging vocabulary that favors a skillful economy of phrase to mental understanding. Sontag often deconstructs and redefines definitions; this break down begins to blur the understanding that the reader has before reading Sontag’s collection of essays. The biggest redefinition in On Photography is of photography itself. Photography, according to Sontag, is a tool for conceptual investigation, capable of capturing and thus emphasizing any aspect of human reality “and in that sense it seems a peculiarly modern art…it has the capacity to turn every experience, every event, and every reality into a commodity, object or image” (“Melancholy Objects”, 60). Sontag gives the reader a new idea about this silver halide art as a “meta-art,” one that "takes the whole world as its subject, cannibalizes all art forms, and converts them into images” (“Melancholy Objects”, 60). In this quote she continues with her fluid list format. She uses this format to breakdown and redefine photography as a meta-art here.
Sontag has a penchant for concisely putting into words the abstract concepts, such as photography’s role in art and society, which she describes as “setting up a chronic voyeuristic relationship to the world which levels the meanings of all events”(“In Plato’s Cave” 11). Sontag examines the nature of photography, concluding that it leads to a continuous stream of images. “For it is the very nature of photography that it be a promiscuous form of seeing, and, in talented hands, an infallible medium of creation” (“Photographic Evangels” 129). There are rarely breaks in her narrative structure paralleled by her usually long fluid sentences, which create a flow through time paralleling the constant flow of images she refers to. On Photography reveals Sontag’s distaste for the ubiquity of photographs--- how “just about everything has been photographed, or so it seems” (“In Plato’s Cave” 3).
Another example of this penchant is when she discusses Walt Whitman’s vision. Whitman was an illustrious poet and writer with numerous works. Sontag summed up the conclusions of his works in one lone standing sentence: “Whitman preached empathy, concord in discord, oneness in diversity”("America, Seen Through Photographs, Darkly" 31). Photographers “gradually gave up the struggle. They might continue to practice the atomistic visual stenography inspired by Whitman. But without Whitman’s delirious powers of synthesis, what the documented was discontinuity, detritus, loneliness, greed, sterility.” ("America, Seen Through Photographs, Darkly" 47-48). This quote exemplifies a Sontag sentence. She utilizes scholarly diction and effortlessly flowing sentences pulled by a string of commas in order to demonstrate the obvious value in the Whitmanian Vision. Sontag parallels Whitman’s writing structure; they both utilize reputation, long list, and long lines. Sontag utilizes an enumeration of examples to recreate this “oneness in diversity”. All of these examples show one idea—the idea that photography is a meta-art. Each object photographed is a piece that fits into the puzzle of the photographic world. Each photo is a component of the picture on a puzzle piece. All of these sub-components, despite how many there may be, come together to create the piece. The pieces and their sub-components come together to form the whole photographic puzzle.
The voyeuristic regard is an essential component of photography: not necessarily in a perverse manner, but in the manner that world is viewed both with detachment and intimacy. Susan Sontag’s tone is voyeuristic and stoic, despite her easily discernable investment in the topic of photography (why else would she write an entire book on it?). Again, Sontag parallels what she is saying and how she says it: Sontag discusses the inherent detachment that comes with photography in a detached manner. Her affinity for photography parallels the intimacy she alludes to. Sontag had a very sexual connection to photography, displayed through both her personal sexual relationship to Annie Leibovitz and her vocabulary. To describe photography with perverse words like: “voyeuristic”, “aggressive”, “a violation”, etc., demonstrates her pattern of the perversion of reality. All of these words are both sexual and stoic, recreating her balance between intimacy and detachment in photography. There exists a strange gap between her use of academic essay constructs and her sexual vocabulary. This gap is dark and slightly disturbed, and its purpose is to obscure reality.
An example of Sontag leaving understanding only for those who actively strive for (and are therefore worthy of) it is found in her discussion of Plato’s parable of the Cave. Sontag claims that the abundance of photographic images form a "chronic voyeuristic relation"(“In Plato’s Cave” 11) between people and the world around them. Sontag parallels the profusion of photographs we see and the people ‘in Plato’s cave’ (“The Image World”). The people in Plato’s cave only see the shadows projected onto the cave wall. Both modern society and the people in the cave ignore the dissonance between the images (even in shadow form) and reality; the people in the cave do not wonder about what the causes of the shadows are.
Sontag argues that “to photograph someone is to violate them”(“In Plato’s Cave” 14) because the camera captures an image of the subject that the subject cannot capture themselves; therefore the camera is inherently aggressive. The balance between detachment and intimacy of photography is well represented when Sontag mentions“The voyeuristic stroller who discovers the city as a landscape of voluptuous (“Melancholy Objects”55). The Bourgeois Flaneur (the specified version of the “voyeuristic stroller”) observed and partook in an inhumane surrealist take over of the modern sensibility. The Flaneur parallels a camera: Sontag parallels both. In On Photography Sontag acts as a camera: she creates an image of the problem and only hints towards the solution. All three: Sontag, the camera, and the Flaneur; are simply a lens and a medium for image capture. They are detached, like a shadow from its object. Sontag argues that seeing photographically replaces the real and alienates the photographer from reality. Due to the modern convenience of cameras the heroism of vision --- a constant thirst for art that derived from photography as a medium--- is accessible to all (“The Heroism of Vision”).
In John Berger’s “Steps Toward a Small Theory of the Visible”, Berger conveys his apprehension over a “system”(106) that is losing touch with reality-- Berger’s system is the technological aspects of society. His concern is also the ubiquity of images. Berger discusses the necessity of art capturing the relationship between the model and the painter, but photographs do not always do this. Berger’s solution is to focus on our eyes and sense of vision, and by doing so he believes we can regain our authentic sense of reality. “Technological innovation has made it easy to separate the apparent from the existent. And this is precisely what the present system… needs to exploit” (106). Berger suggests using the very technology that made the differences between the physical and conceptual volatile can be used to reverse the effect. What if Instagram limited its users to one photograph a month? Instantaneously, every Instagram photo would be more memorable and have inherent emotional value. Sontag proposes an ecology of the real and of the images. Sontag exclaims that such an ecology of images occurred during the time of the Farm Security Administration.
Personally, the most arresting aspect of Sontag’s writing is the way she briefly touches on meaningful examples (if the reader is not familiar with the tidbit, it is not her prerogative to inform them). This attitude it creates pathways and opens meanings for the reader to discover on their own. An example of one of these opened paths along the way of Sontag’s discussion is the significance of the Farm Security Administration (FSA)--- The FSA was a group of America’s most talented photographers; like Dorothea Lang, Walker Evans, Ben Shahn, and Russell Lee were commissioned by the government to take depression-era documentary photography (“In Plato’s Cave” 6). Their value was that as government funded group of artists, they could afford to perfect each shot, “the immensely gifted members of the FSA… would take dozens of [their]… subjects until satisfied that they had gotten just the right look on film” (“In Plato’s Cave” 6). During the time Sontag was writing On Photography, the government was cutting funding for arts in education and society as a whole and the value of photography in the government was diminishing. Her persistent reminders of the FSA imply the loss of governmental value for authentic and historic photos taken by the time period’s best photographers. This point could have been an entirely separate Sontag essay, but by out casting it as a repetitive offshoot of her other essays she leaves it to be understood only by the readers who are worthy of understanding it.
Sontag articulates that the plethora of images we see every day leads us to mentally reconstruct a new reality of the world. After researching externally --- and becoming worthy of the meaning--- about the allegory of Plato’s cave, I realized that Sontag fails to mention the ultimate fate of the cave people. Her only hint towards their fate is when she bridges the two worlds together briefly and says that the “insatiability of the photographing eye changes the terms of confinement in the cave, our world” (“In Plato’s Cave” 3). According to Plato, the cave people are actually prisoners, and those who escape from the cave see the authentic world behind the shadows. At first, the escapees are shocked and horrified by what they see. But, after they adjust they are the only people able to see an authentic reality (Plato).
Walker Percy’s “The Loss of the Creature” fills the gaps Sontag leaves the reader to self-discover; Percy discusses perception and unpackaging reality, or in this case finding the object behind shadows and the distinction of photographs from reality. Percy’s essay is a study of the way the reality of an individual is masked in and eventually lost because of the systems of education and classification in the “modern technical society”(Percy 760). It illuminated the power society has on everyday life. Sontag reiterates that reality and the images our society creates are “packaged”(Percy) together. Percy also discusses touristic validation: it is not about the travels but about having an authentic experience that is validated by an external source (Percy 755). Sontag, in solidarity with Percy, accords that photography is a validation of experiences—such as traveling, “it seems positively unnatural to travel for pleasure without taking a camera along”(9). But, the flaw in this validation is that photos do not render a world of understanding like the human eye and brain do. The camera merely renders a world of aesthetic consumerism; the embodiment of the inseparable bond between reality and photography or as Plato would say, between the shadow and its object. Sontag self validates with her straightforward and aggressive tone; thus she is the change that she wants to be.
To unwrap these packages and escape Plato’s cave is virtually impossible due to the magnitude of the interconnectedness of image and reality. Percy claims that to unpack these packages the prisoner’s must struggle and escape. This struggle, if understood, deepens Sontag’s essay greatly. To understand how to overcome the problem possesses the reader to actually make a change in his or her own life. This change could be to limit their photo output on social networking or simply to take a moment to take in each image they see. Sontag poses the complex conundrum of our prepackaged, image-overridden society but never directly addresses the solution, leaving way for an infinite number of solutions. Without struggling to understand the solutions that Sontag implied by the patterns in her writing, the reader will never be able to find the solution to the perplexing problem--- a continued struggle.
WORKS CITED
"John Berger: Steps Toward a Small Theory of the Visible." Occasions for Writing With 2009 MLA Update Card. Wadsworth Pub Co, 2009. Print.
Plato, and Paul Shorey. The Republic,. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1937. Print.
Sontag, Susan. On Photography. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977. Print.
“In Plato’s Cave”
"America, Seen Through Photographs, Darkly"
“Melancholy Objects”
“The Heroism of Vision”
“Photographic Evangels”
“The Image-World”
"Walker Percy: The Loss of the Creature." Occasions for Writing With 2009 MLA Update Card. Wadsworth Pub Co, 2009. Print.