ON PHOTOGRAPHY ~ ~ ~\\eme tOt V'\l.'Co:t\~ ~ \'\\\0 'i!,~'\\tt'd\ C,.\tc'\\\'dt\()\\. Susan Sontag tht ~hat()'g,ta'j)\\~ ate to I \), tl;w. mnovelist. She has studied at Berkeley, Harvard, Ox­ to the recommendec ford, and the Sorbonne and considers herself a writer without specialization. Among amount of time to be her books are several works of criticism, Against Interpretation, On Photography, Chris Marker's film AIDS and Its Metaphors, as well as a novel, The Volcano, and a play, Alice in Bed. madaires (1966), a br ' tation on photograp~ suggests a subtler al packaging (and en]; o collect photographs is to collect the world. seems a less treacherous form of leaching out the Both the order and t~ T Movies and television programs light up world, of turning it into a mental object, than each photograph are walls, flicker, and go out; but with still pho­ photographic images, which now provide most gain in visual legibil tographs the image is also an object, lightweight, of the knowledge people have about the look of But photographs tral cheap to produce, easy to carry about, accumu­ the past and the reach of the present. What is be collectible object late, store. In Godard's Les Carabiniers (1963), written about a person or an event is frankly an served up in books. two sluggish lumpen-peasants are lured into interpretation, as are handmade visual state­ Photographs fur joining the King's Army by the promise that ments, like paintings and drawings. Pho­ we hear abollt, but ( they will be able to loot, rape, kill, or do what­ tographed images do not seem to be statements we're shown a photc ever else they please to the enemy, and get rich. about the world so much as pieces of it, minia­ of its utility, the ca But the suitcase of booty that Michel-Ange and tures of reality that anyone can make or acquire. Starting with their us Ulysse triumphantly bring home, years later, to Photographs, which fiddle with the scale of murderous roundup their wives turns out to contain only picture the world, themselves get reduced, blown up, 1871, photographs postcards, hundreds of them, of Monuments, cropped, retouched, doctored, tricked out. They modern states in the Department Stores, Mammals, \X'onders of Na­ age, plagued by the usual ills of paper objects; their increasingly m ture, Methods of Transport, \X'orks of Art, and they disappear; they become valuable, and get other version of its ut other classified treasures from around the globe. bought and sold; they are reproduced. Pho­ tifies. A photograph Godard's gag vividly parodies the equivocal tographs, which package the world, seem to in­ p roof that a given th magic of the photographic image. Photographs vite packaging. They are stuck in albums, may distort; but thel are perhaps the most mysterious of all the ob­ framed and set on tables, tacked on walls, pro­ that something exists jects that make up, and thicken, the environ­ jected as slides. Newspapers and magazines fea­ what's in the picture ment we recognize as modern. Photographs re­ ture them; cops alphabetize them; museums ex­ (through amateurisrr ally are experience captured, and the camera is hibit them; publishers compile them. artistry) of the indivi the ideal arm of consciousness in its acquisitive For many decades the book has been the tograph-any photc mood. most influential way of arranging (and usually more innocent, and t To photograph is to appropriate the thing miniaturizing) photographs, thereby guarantee­ lation to visible real photographed. It means putting oneself into a ing them longevity, if not immortality-pho­ objects. Virtuosi of t certain relation to the world that feels like tographs are fragile objects, easily torn or mis­ Stieglitz and Paul S knowledge-and, therefore, like power. A now laid-and a wider public. The photograph in a unforgettable p notorious first fall into alienation, habituating book is, obviously, the image of an image. But sti ll want, first of a people to abstract the world into printed words, since it is, to begin with, a printed, smooth ob­ there," just like the is supposed to have engendered that surplus of ject, a photograph loses much less of its essential photographs are a Faustian energy and psychic damage needed to quality when reproduced in a book than a paint­ ing, or the build modern, inorganic societies. But print ing does. Still, the book is not a wholly satisfac­ snapshots as 22 • On Photography 175 tory scheme for putting groups of photographs While a painting or a prose description can into general circulation. The sequence in which never be other than a narrowly selective inter­ the photographs are to be looked at is proposed pretation, a photograph can be treated as a nar­ by the order of pages, but nothing holds readers rowly selective transparency. But despite the to the recommended order or indicates the presumption of veracity that gives all pho­ amount of time to be spent on each photograph. tographs authority, interest, seductiveness, the Chris Marker's film, Si j'avais quatre dro­ work that photographers do is no generic excep­ madaires (1966), a brilliantly orchestrated medi­ tion to the usually shady commerce between art tation on photographs of all sorts and themes, and truth. Even when photographers are most suggests a subtler and more rigorous way of concerned with mirroring reality, they are still packaging (and enlarging) still photographs. haunted by tacit imperatives of taste and con­ Both the order and the exact time for looking at science. The immensely gifted members of the each photograph are imposed; and there is a Farm Security Administration photographic gain in visual legibility and emotional impact. project of the late 1930s (among them Walker But photographs transcribed in a film cease to Evans, Dorothea Lange, Ben Shahn, Russell Lee) be collectible objects, as they still are when would take dozens of frontal pictures of one of served up in books. their sharecropper subjects until satisfied that Photographs furnish evidence. Something they had gotten just the right look on film-the we hear about, but doubt, seems proven when precise expression on the subject's face that sup­ we're shown a photograph of it. In one version ported their own notions about poverty, light, of its utility, the camera record incriminates. dignity, texture, exploitation, and geometry. In Starting with their use by the Paris police in the deciding how a picture should look, in prefer­ murderous roundup of Communards in June ring one exposure to another, photographers are 1871, photographs became a useful tool of always imposing standards on their subjects. Al­ modern states in the surveillance and control of though there is a sense in which the camera does their increasingly mobile populations. In an­ indeed capture reality, not just interpret it, pho­ other version of its utility, the camera record jus­ tographs are as much an interpretation of the tifies. A photograph passes for incontrovertible world as paintings and drawings are. Those oc­ proof that a given thing happened. The picture casions when the taking of photographs is rela­ may distort; but there is always a presumption tively undiscriminating, promiscuous, or self­ that something exists, or did exist, which is like effacing do not lessen the didacticism of the what's in the picture. Whatever the limitations whole enterprise. This very passivity-and ubiq­ (through amateurism) or pretensions (through uity-of the photographic record is photogra­ artistry) of the individual photographer, a pho­ phy's "message," its aggression. tograph-any photograph-seems to have a Images which idealize (like most fashion more innocent, and therefore more accurate, re­ and animal photography) are no less aggressive lation to visible reality than do other mimetic than work which makes a virtue of plainness objects. Virtuosi of the noble image like Alfred (like class pictures, still lifes of the bleaker sort, Stieglitz and Paul Strand, composing mighty, and mug shots). There is an aggression implicit unforgettable photographs decade after decade, in every use of the camera. This is as evident in still want, first of all, to show something "out the 1840s and 1850s, photography's glorious there," just like the Polaroid owner for whom first two decades, as in all the succeeding photographs are a handy, fast form of note-tak­ decades, during which technology made possible ing, or the shutterbug with a Brownie who takes an ever increasing spread of that mentality snapshots as souvenirs of daily life. which looks at the world as a set of potential 176 Part V • Image Technologies and the Emergence of Mass Society photographs. Even for such early masters as are cherished. Pho David Octavius Hill and Julia Margaret family life just whe) Cameron who used the camera as a means of tries of Europe and getting painterly images, the point of taking of the family starts photographs was a vast departure from the aims As that c1austroph< of painters. From its start, photography implied was being carved ( the capture of the largest possible number of aggregate, photogr< subjects. Painting never had so imperial a scope. alize, to restate syn' The subsequent industrialization of camera tech­ tinuity and vanish nology only carried out a promise inherent in life. Those ghostly photography from its very beginning: to democ­ the token presence ratize all experiences by translating them into family's photograpl images. the extended famil) That age when taking photographs required mains of it. a cumbersome and expensive contraption-the As photograph: toy of 'the clever, the wealthy, and the ob­ possession of a past sessed-seems remote indeed from the era of people to take posse sleek pocket cameras that invite anyone to take are insecure. Thus , pictures. The first cameras, made in France and , tandem with one 0 England in the early 1840s, had only inventors ~. modern activities: t< and buffs to operate them. Since there were then history, large numbt: no professional photographers, there could not out of their habitual be amateurs either, and taking photographs had riods of time. It set no clear social use; it was a gratuitous, that is, r,'l" l~tc'lu~ F.l:u"••• ", travel for pleasure THE EABTMAH DRY PLATE" FILM 00.,116, Odord 8t., London, W. an artistic activity, though with few pretensions along. Photographs to being an art. It was only with its industrializa­ 267. /I,h-(I"IISt'IIIOIt of th'·.first KoddJ: dence that the trip \! tion that photography came into its own as art. {(mura, 1888 was carried out, thai As industrialization provided social uses for the document sequences operations of the photographer, so the reaction The Kodak. Early efforts to popularize the camera used the instructional forms in magazine and news­ outside the view of against these uses reinforced the self-conscious­ pa per advertising. National Archives of Canada. But dependence on ness of photography-as-art. that makes real \\ Recently, photography has become almost doesn't fade when r as widely practiced an amusement as sex and photographs fills th dancing-which means that, like every mass art a camera, but a household with children is twice mopolitans accumlll form, photography is not practiced by most peo­ as likely to have at least one camera as a house­ of their boat trip II ple as an art. It is mainly a social rite, a defense hold in which there are no children. Not to take fourteen days in Chi) against anxiety, and a tool of power. pictures of one's children, particularly when dle-class vacationers Memorializing the achievements of individ­ they are small, is a sign of parental indifference, fel Tower or Niagara uals considered as members of families (as well just as not turning up for one's graduation pic­ A way of certifyi as of other groups) is the earliest popular use of ture is a gesture of adolescent rebellion. tographs is also a wa: photography. For at least a century, the wedding Through photographs, each family con­ experience to a sear photograph has been as much a part of the cere­ structs a portrait-chronicle of itself-a portable converting experience mony as the prescribed verbal formulas. Cam­ kit of images that bears witness to its connected­ Travel becomes a ~ eras go with family life. According to a sociolog­ ness. It hardly matters what activities are pho­ photographs. The H ical study done in France, most households have tographed so long as photographs get taken and tures is soothing, an( 22 • On Photography 177 are cherished. Photography becomes a rite of of disorientation that are likely to be exacer­ family life just when, in the industrializing coun­ bated by travel. Most tourists feel compelled to tries of Europe and America, the very institution put the camera between themselves and what­ of the family starts undergoing radical surgery. ever is remarkable that they encounter. Unsure As that claustrophobic unit, the nuclear family, of other responses, they take a picture. This was being carved out of a much larger family gives shape to experience: stop, take a photo­ aggregate, photography came along to memori­ graph, and move on. The method especially ap­ alize, to restate symbolically, the imperiled con­ peals to people handicapped by a ruthless work tinuity and vanishing extendedness of family ethic-Germans, Japanese, and Americans. Us­ life. Those ghostly traces, photographs, supply ing a camera appeases the anxiety which the the token presence of the dispersed relatives. A work-driven feel about not working when they ­ family's photograph album is generally about are on vacation and supposed to be having fun. the extended family-and, often, is all that re­ They have something to do that is like a friendly mains of it. imitation of work: they can take pictures. As photographs give people an imaginary People robbed of their past seem to make possession of a past that is unreal, they also help the most fervent picture takers, at home and people to take possession of space in which they abroad. Everyone who lives in an industrialized are insecure. Thus, photography develops in society is obliged gradually to give up the past, tandem with one of the most characteristic of but in certain countries, such as the United modern activities: tourism. For the first time in States and Japan, the break with the past has history, large numbers of people regularly travel been particularly traumatic. In the early 1970s, out of their habitual environments for short pe­ the fable of the brash American tourist of the riods of time. It seems positively unnatural to 1950s and 1960s, rich with dollars and Babbit­ travel for pleasure without taking a camera try, was replaced by the mystery of the group­ along. Photographs will offer indisputable evi­ minded Japanese tourist, newly released from dence that the trip was made, that the program his island prison by the miracle of overvalued was carried out, that fun was had. Photographs yen, who is generally armed with two cameras, document sequences of consumption carried on one on each hip. outside the view of family, friends, neighbors. Photography has become one of the princi­ But dependence on the camera, as the device pal devices for experiencing something, for giv­ that makes real what one is experiencing, ing an appearance of participation. One full­ doesn't fade when people travel more. Taking page ad shows a small group of people standing photographs fills the same need for the cos­ pressed together, peering out of the photograph, mopolitans accumulating photograph-trophies all but one looking stunned, excited, upset. The of their boat trip up the Albert Nile or their one who wears a different expression holds a fourteen days in China as it does for lower-mid­ camera to his eye; he seems self-possessed, is al­ dle-class vacationers taking snapshots of the Eif­ most smiling. While the others are passive, fel Tower or Niagara Falls. clearly alarmed spectators, having a camera has A way of certifying experience, taking pho­ transformed one person into something active, a tographs is also a way of refusing it-by limiting voyeur: only he has mastered the situation. experience to a search for the photogenic, by What do these people see? We don't know. And converting experience into an image, a souvenir. it doesn't matter. It is an Event: something Travel becomes a strategy for accumulating worth seeing-and therefore worth photograph­ photographs. The very activity of taking pic­ ing. The ad copy, white letters across the dark tures is soothing, and assuages general feelings lower third of the photograph like news coming 178 Part V • Image Technologies and the Emergence of Mass Society over a teletype machine, consists of just six act of ba yo neting a trussed-up collaborator, ore than half words: " ... Prague ... Woodstock ... Vietnam comes from the awareness of how plausible it M Daguerre's el1 ... Sapporo ... Londonderry .. . LEICA." has become, in situations where the photogra­ early 1890s when it f Crushed hopes, youth antics, colonial wars, and pher has the choice between a photograph and a feasible to reprodu winter sports are alike-are equalized by the life, to choose the photograph. The person who tographs in large n camera. Taking photographs has set up a intervenes cannot record; the person who is this point, the contil chronic voyeuristic relation to the world which recording cannot intervene. Dziga Vertov's great image had to be tre levels the meaning of all events. film, Man with a Movie Camera (1'929), gives ing-which meant th A photograph is not just the result of an en­ the ideal image of the photographer as someone for newspapers to e; counter between an event and a photographer; in perpetual movement, someone movmg regular or even JUSt picture-taking is an event in itself, and one with through a panorama of disparate events with ture reporters on the ever more peremptory rights-to interfere with, such agility and speed that any intervention is tration, The IllustratE to invade, or to ignore whatever is going on. Our out of the question. Hitchcock's Rear Window all draughtsmen wh( very sense of situation is now articulated by the (1954) gives the complementary image: the pho­ at considerably low( camera's interventions. The omnipresence of tographer played by James Stewart has an inten­ glass negatives in bij cameras persuasively suggests that time consists sified relation to one event, through his camera, representing battles, of interesting events, events worth photograph­ precisely because he has a broken leg and is con­ events at the peak m ing. This, in turn, makes it easy to feel that any fined to a wheelchair; being temporarily immo­ artist had been thel event, once underway, and whatever its moral bilized prevents him from acting on what he more exciting than character, should be allowed to complete itself­ sees, and makes it even more important to take which usually arriVE so that something else can be brought into the pictures. Even if incompatible with intervention record fast action an world, the photograph. After the event has ended, in a physical sense, using a camera is still a form ings of the Special Ar the picture will still exist, conferring on the event of participation. Although the camera is an ob­ if not altogether ficti a kind of immortality (and importance) it would servation station, the act of photographing not give an edge to tI never otherwise have enjoyed. While real people is more than passive observing. Like sexual cause the latter lost d are out there killing themselves or other real peo­ voyeurism, it is a way of at least tacitly, often ex­ t,icity when transferre ple, the photographer stays behind his or her plicitly, encouraging whatever is going on to Thus it is no wo camera, creating a tiny element of another world: keep on happening. To take a picture is to have history of photograp the image-world that bids to outlast us aU. an interest in things as they are, in the status quo gle photographer wh Photographing is essentially an act of non­ remaining unchanged (at least for as long as it news reporting, or \ intervention. Part of the horror of such memo­ takes to get a "good" picture), to be in complic­ gans for any length 0 rable coups of contemporary photojournalism ity with whatever makes a subject interesting, tive exceptions to th as the pictures of a Vietnamese bonze reaching worth photographing-including, when that is by major wars, whid for the gasoline can, of a Bengali guerrilla in the the interest, another person's pain or misfortune. a few enterprising r and Fenton to embal campaigns. Even the Brady's two-year ca War with dozens of ( EARLY PHOTOJOURNALISM temporary effort, no ing machinery. ivlor Ulrich Keller Washington and Ne out a large vollume 0' Ulrich Keller is a professor in the department ofart history at the Univesity of Califor­ still seems to have b, nia at Santa Barbara and an adjunct curator of photography at the University of Cali­ uct. And if his gran fornia at Santa Barbara Art Museum. ended in bankruptcy