RE: [Leica] Suzy Q, again

[Peterson Arthur G NSSC <PetersonAG@NAVSEA.NAVY.MIL>]

I should think he was "snipping a lot of context"---like the whole rest of
her book.  But I'd suggest that these thoughts are not "facile," and so
rather than seize upon ways in which we may see them as "dismissive and
contemptuous" or even "enraging," we should do better to give Ms. Sontag the
benefit of the doubt and to consider ways in which what she took the trouble
to write might make some perceptive sense (regardless of whether we come to
agree with it).

:-)

Art Peterson


- -----Original Message-----
From:	Paul Chefurka [mailto:Paul_Chefurka@pmc-sierra.com]
Sent:	Tuesday, September 26, 2000 3:52 PM
To:	'leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us'
Subject:	RE: [Leica] Suzy Q, again

I hope you're snipping a lot of context, Arthur, because if these quotes
accurately reflect Ms. Sontag's impressions of the art, I truly despair.  In
fact I find the thoughts you have quoted to be facile, dismissive and
contemptuous.  If they really reflect her outlook, I may in fact never read
the whole book, because my blood pressure wouldn't take it.  Just these bits
are more enraging than a week-long thread on watches.

If this stuff showed up on a usenet newsgroup, I'd call the post a troll.

Paul

>-----Original Message-----
>From: ARTHURWG@aol.com [mailto:ARTHURWG@aol.com]
>Sent: Tuesday, September 26, 2000 3:26 PM
>To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
>Subject: Re: [Leica] Suzy Q, again
>
>
>"There is an agression implicit in every use of the Camera." 
>
>"Recently, photography has become almost as widely practiced 
>an amusement as 
>sex and dancing..." 
>
>"A way of certifying experience, taking photographs is also a 
>way of refusing 
>it-- by limiting experience to a search for the photogenic, by 
>converting 
>experience into an image, a souvenir."
>
>"it would not be wrong to speak of people having a ' compulsion' to 
>photograph: to turn experience itself into a way of seeing."
>
>"Needing to have reality confirmed and experienced enhanced by 
>photographs is 
>an aesthetic consumerism to which everyone is now adicted." 
>
>                                                            
>--Susan Sontag
>Arthur
>