A photograph is not only an image (as a painting is an image), an inte…

Susan Sontag
253 citations
A photograph is not only an image (as a painting is an image), an interpretation of the real; it is also a trace, something directly stenciled off the real, like a footprint or a death mask. ✨ New York Review of Books 23 June 1977
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Although there is a sense in which the camera does indeed capture reality, not just interpret it, photographs are as much an interpretation of the world as paintings and drawings are ✨ Susan Sontag ( … ▶
The camera makes everyone a tourist in other people's reality, and eventually in one's own. ✨ New York Review of Books 18 Apr. 1974
All great art contains at its center contemplation, a dynamic contemplation. ✨ Susan Sontag (2012). As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980, p.50, Macmillan
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A photograph is not only an image (as a painting is an image), an interpretation of the real; it is also a trace, something directly stenciled off the real, like a footprint or a death mask. ✨ New York Review of Books 23 June 1977

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