I first read about
this book while exploring Geoff Dyer’s “The On-Going Moment” and put it, along
with books by John Berger and Barthes, on my reading list. It's taken a long
time to get to this point and writing this seems to have taken almost as long as
reaing the book in the first place.
“On Photography”
was first published in 1977 and is a collection of essays written between 1973
and 1977. In it, Sontag explores the force of photographic images which are
continually inserted between experience and reality by artists, governments and
people who want to sell you stuff. Sontag goes on to develop the concept of
‘transparency’: in a world where anything can be photographed, and photography
has removed the standard definitions and boundaries of ‘art’ a viewer can
approach a photograph freely without any preconceived notions of what it could
mean or even having an expectation of discovering what it means.
I found this an
incredibly frustrating book to read. A couple of times I threw it across the
table with a: “Really? Really? WTF?”. I would go back and start again. At times
I felt like an icebreaker in pack ice: going forward as far as I could,
reversing and taking another run at the ice. As one reviewer said: “I'm giving
it four stars not for the content itself, but for the quality of thinking I did
while reading.”
Frustrating is her
umwelt wherein everything is politicized and the mere act of making an image is
compared to a rape, an act of aggression or an act of acquisition. She
selectively chooses to ignore the concept of “making” an image choosing instead
to speak of “taking” and “shooting”; terms which are, unfortunately, very
common in describing the act of pressing the shutter release. I’ve always
viewed what I do as a much more gentle process, a totality: making an image is
the whole process from seeing the potentiality of something you observe,
exposing light sensitive material to the scene and finally developing and
printing the resulting image.
Frustrating is her
repeated (and tiresome) assertion that consumerism and capitalism requires
photography to drive consumer demand. Songtag ignores the fact that the driving
of consumer demand through advertising worked quite well with the idealised
illustrations you would see on billboards and in magazines and newspapers of an
earlier age. Not mentioned at all is the use of photographs in fascist and
communist propaganda; these regimes where adept at using photographs to “drive
demand” for their particular brand of political philosophy. I’m not even going
to comment that it was consumerism that allowed these essays to get published
in the first place.
Frustrating is her
detestation of the surrealists dismissing them as gadflys and calling them
militants. Dali, militant? Off the wall perhaps, but hardly militant. This was
one of the times when the book flew across the table, not that I’m an overt fan
of the surrealist movement but as a school of thought and art it is worthy of
consideration. I find Liebowitz’ portraits as surreal as any work by Dali or
Magritte but hey, what do I know. Perhaps some young art student cornered her
at a salon. Who knows.
Frustrating are her
vehement criticisms of the entire activity of photography, never once pointing
out an instance where the creation of an image (in my definition) is a
worthwhile pursuit. Trotting out the usual "it's a mechanical process and
your're separated from reality by the viewfinder" doesn't wash for me. The
act of writing, be it with pen or typewriter is a mechanical process and you
are separated from reality by the paper and your mind.
But man, when she
nails it, she nails it.
She nails it when
she pillories photographic apologists who drone on and on to justify their
existence as ‘artists’. This battle, as Berger and Dyer have written, was over
a long time ago. Like Toto, she pulls at the curtain exposing the great Oz. I
have read too many ‘artist’s statements’ that make my head spin. They seem to
be written to a) show how erudite they are, b) appeal to some grant issuing
arts council, and/or c) buffalo the ‘arts patron’ in attempt to mystify what is
essentially a democratic art form and she calls them on it.
She nails it when
she talks about the democratization of photography and how people (dare I say
the masses) use it to construct and remember their reality. She actually
presages the rise of the selfie and the endless streams of images showing what
a person is having for dinner on any number of social network sites. She makes
the point that we are relying on images as a proof of reality, the catchphrase
and the resulting meme: ‘Pictures or it didn’t happen’ is unfortunate proof of
that. At UCLA, the collection of her papers shows a correspondence with Philip
K. Dick and I wonder if this is along the lines of “We remember it for you,
wholesale”.
The democratization
of photography and its impact on the profession and its artistry is not really
a new idea. It was already a recurring theme in the ‘50s in the pages of
Aperture. If you read “Aperture, The Minor White Years” you’ll see what I mean.
Berger notes that once an art form has been democratized, the art establishment
or those with the most to lose, will mystify and mythologize the art form in an
endeavour to maintain a grasp over it. They create an entire set of incantations
and rituals, not unlike a priesthood controlling access to the god viewing
those who practice rite or beliefs in their own ways as apostate.
She nails it when
she bemoans (in the ‘70s aready!) the “rancorous suspicion in America of
whatever seems literary, not to mention a growing reluctance … to read
anything,…”
She nails it when
she talks about the sloppy, the ill-disciplined: the anti-photograph. Even
though she is no fan of photography, what comes through loud and clear is
something like this:
“Look, if you’re
going to this, even though I think it's a load of dingos' kidneys, at least do
it right. Slapdash is slapdash and you can’t wrap it up with some vapid second
rate artist’s statement and pass it off as art.”
She nails it when
she talks about photographers returning to simpler technology, eschewing the
latest and going back to a beloved camera and lens that they first used in an
effort to connect to the craft of photography. We see that trend today, me
included. I gave up the all singing, all dancing DSLR and now, although still
digital, shoot with a rangefinder. Yes, I still have an autofocus mirrorless
digital camera but I use it like I use my rangefinder. I won’t go back to film
as I don’t like the stink. I was glad to give up the darkroom for the screen.
Sontag refers to
the camera as an “instrument of fast seeing”. The gearhead cult of faster and
faster, more and more resolution is being questioned. There is an urge to go
back to a more artisanal way, a more contemplative, hand wrought image, an
image that had an aura and the imprimatur of the photographer. In fact she
references HCB as saying it’s almost too fast now.
In the end, you
have to read this book. Love it or loathe it, it will make you think. You have
to consider it within the time period that it was written, Watergate, the end
of the Vietnam war, global recession and 2nd wave feminism. At times
it appears contentious for its own sake, other times you feel written into a
corner, presented with a fait acomplii, with no room for further argument. The
writing is sophisticated and you can be seduced by “fine well-articulated prose
which uses its own music to trick the reader into believing the message” in the
words of one reviewer.
Berger in his
television series “Ways of Seeing” and in the accompanying book is, to my mind
much more honest. Rather than saying:
“I am a very
clever man. Here is my ideological construct. I’m much more clever than you so
take it as read that I’m right”
he says, (several
times in fact):
“This a theory
that seems to work for me and explain several things that I have been thinking
about. Take these ideas and think about them, accept them or reject them, it’s
your choice.”
So, where does this
leave me, a non-art student wandering around like a ronin trying to understand
his chosen art form? I think it has moved me along a bit on my ronin road.
I’m just a guy who
makes images of the world as he sees it, trying to make sense of it, his place
in it and maybe use images to tell a story or two. This school or that school,
this genre or that genre, colour or black and white, film or digital, this
political stance or that one, paper or plastic; it really doesn’t amount to
anything in the long run. I’ll just keep trying to share a story, an experience
with you and maybe learn a bit about you, me and the world.
I’ll get to Edo
yet.
