On Photography Summary

Overview

• On Photography is a 1977 collection of essays by Susan Sontag.
• Explores the history of photography and its relationship to reality, fine arts, and sociopolitical power.
• Essays published in the New York Review of Books (1973-1977) before book form.
• Investigates photography as a medium akin to language, often reinforcing societal norms.
• Won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism in 1977.

Themes

• Consumerism and Contemporary Life
• Art and Power Dynamics
• Photography’s role in Surveillance and Reality

Content Warning

• Contains racially biased depictions and language offensive to marginalized groups.

Essay Summaries

In Plato's Cave

• Establishes theoretical foundation, comparing photography to Plato's allegory of the cave.
• Photographs, like shadows, replace reality.
• Photography as appropriation; cameras as tools of intrusion.
• Society's prioritization of surveillance and control through images.

America, Seen Through Photographs, Darkly

• Focuses on American photography's fascination with kitsch and the banal.
• Compares trends to Walt Whitman's idea of seeing all aspects of America as beautiful.
• Photography as a form of colonization and tourism.

Melancholy Objects

• Examines photographs as objects and their relationship with time.
• Photographs preserve moments, creating a surreal aspect of time.
• Leads to a desire to collect and catalogue.

The Heroism of Vision

• Discusses photographers’ views on their gaze and purpose.
• Photography as a modern heroic act by the 1920s.
• Challenges the relationship between photography and art.

Photographic Evangels

• Analyzes rhetoric surrounding photography’s importance.
• Split between photography as art and document.
• Photography reshapes art and is a medium like language.

The Image World

• Explores photography's impact on reality perception.
• Images in industrial societies surpass actual experiences.
• Image saturation facilitates population control.

A Brief Anthology of Quotations

• Collection of quotes on photography.
• Inspired by Walter Benjamin's The Arcades Project.

Additional Information

• Uses 2005 RosettaBooks eBook edition.
• Includes racially biased depictions and offensive language.
• Reference for further study with mobile app access, PDFs, and literary AI tools.