On Photography Susan Sontag Analysis

With the touch of a single click a picture is taken and forever revitalized. Photography takes the essence of memory and seals it into the history of those involved in the process. Susan Sontag’s didactic text “On Photography” digs deep into the meaning of photography and claims that it has unlimited power within modern society. Her exclamation that “cameras are fantasy-machines” exerts the idea that photography brings the world closer together, yet seems so distant as if it were all but an illusion. Sontag starts off her text by asserting that humans are still in Plato’s cave. She argues that humans become obsessed with power and knowledge, through photography one controls the mechanism of dominion, by exerting our experience and thoughts
In “The Heroism of Vision” Sontag discusses the relationship between beauty in truth and its impact on photographic history. She holds that photography is meant to find beauty in the world and capture it. For example a beautiful photo of a sunset makes an actual sunset banal, why search and wait for a sunset when it can be seen whenever you want. This heightens Sontag’s claim that the act of taking photographs replaces an actual experience by creating an illusion that distorts reality through nostalgia. In other words, a fantasy world that gives the viewer a sense of participation of what was once reality. This arbitrary relationship sets up a “chronic voyeuristic relation to the world which levels the meaning of all events” (Sontag 15). The photographer is habitually removed from the world, but still feels a false sense of familiarization and participation in a world full of déjà vu. Beauty as seen today is in a state of confusion due to the progression of technology. The camera can now lie, cheat, and deceive those mesmerized by its use. Humans now hold the power to use photography to forge a reality to suit their own aesthetics. Giving photography the ability to document its own vision of imagery and thus reconcile the truth with the need for
Photography has become a medium through which people express their ideas, thoughts, and happiness. With a single look, you are brought back to the past and are allowed to relive it. Photography is not an art, but has the capacity of turning everything it captures into art. The more you look at photographs, the more you become inspired to take them. A revelation of Sontag’s statement that photography is becoming ever more institutionalized, but more so addicting. Though addiction is a small price to pay for, after all the camera allows you to recreate a world as you see