SONTAG QUOTABLES

the late sontag did not say anything new. she merely used dramatic irony to describe what was already blasé. her style could impress you at first but the messages were mostly worn out, well established facts. even the photographers she described were already famous at the time of her writing. she did not cite budding ones who are now considered greats. these were the scathing comments i got from one of the venerable members of rfilipinas. (i might have embellished the words a bit but the bite is the same).
the book was written during the early part of the psychedelic years when ugly solid state technology made its rude onslaught. despite this, i thought it still had the vacuum tube realism.
but true, sontag did not write anything ground-breaking but her style of writing is like the dark coffee i take every time i need a perk. and notwithstanding the negative feedback from my well-respected friend, i quote some of my favorites from her book On Photography:

"A photograph is both a pseudo-presence and a token of absence."

"The camera doesn't rape, or even possess, though it may presume, intrude, trespass, distort, exploit, and, at the farthest reach of metaphor, assassinate -- all activities that, unlike the sexual push and shove, can be conducted from a distance, and with some detachment."


"The camera as phallus is, at most, a flimsy variant of the inescapable metaphor that everyone unselfconsciously employs. However hazy our awareness of this fantasy, it is named without subtlety whenever we talk about 'loading', and 'aiming' a camera, about 'shooting' a film."


"What renders a photograph surreal is its irrefutable pathos as a message from time past, and the concreteness of its intimations about social class."


"Photography, though not an art form in itself, has the peculiar capacity to turn all its subjects into works of art."

"Time eventually positions most photographs, even the most amateurish, at the level of art."


no doubt, she is a beautiful read. and so far, the best on photography. and i have read ... let me count my fingers.