Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/09/13

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Subject: Re: [Leica]More Sontag et al
From: "Bob Walkden" <bobwalkden@hotmail.com>
Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 22:09:32 BST

Hello,

you make this sound as though she were writing apropos of Nachtwey, which 
she was not. She doesn't mention Nachtwey in that essay ("In Plato's Cave"), 
(although she does mention McCullin, one of your good guys iirc). Nor is she 
likely even to have been thinking about Nachtwey, since he did not come to 
prominence until approx. 1980, whereas "On Photography" was published in 
1971, and the essay was presumably written and published at least a year 
earlier.

Nor does she offer any evidence to support her claim. The claim may or may 
not be true (I think it is false), but she immediately precedes the fragment 
you quoted with "After 30 years a saturation point *may* have been reached" 
(my emphasis).

Selective quoting out of context is a game we can all enjoy. Here are 2 more 
from La Sontag:

"Each still photograph is a privileged moment. Photographs like [...] naked 
South Viewnamese girl [...] Probably did more to increase public revulsion 
against the war than a hundred hours of televised barbarities."

"The taste for quotations (and for the juxtaposition of incongruous 
quotations) is a Surrealist taste."

Unfortunately it does little to increase knowledge or understanding.

Cheers,

Bob

>From: ARTHURWG@aol.com
>
>Sontag (Apropos of Nachtwey):
>
>"In the last decades, 'concerned photography' has done at least as much to
>deaden conscience as to arouse it."
>
>Arthur

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