Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/09/26
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Krechtz@aol.com jotted down the following: > But not all photographs 'confirm' reality or 'enhance' experience. She is > describing a very limited form of photography. It's like saying all bread is > white bread, so stay off it. This is a common technique, and fault, of many critics and one in which I delightfully partake myself: picking out one limited aspect of something and secretly generalizing it to cover the whole field. Quite clearly, Sontag's comments appear to be about the role of the photograph in Western (or perhaps the industrial world's) media and commerce. I think she makes some valid points about these worlds and those applications, but I think that their applicability is limited to other areas. At the same time, much of what she writes is at a very high level of abstraction. Lines tend to blur and, in some ways, it almost becomes possible to exchange 'photography' in those excerpted comments for just about any other techology-based activity. M. - -- Martin Howard | Jonesboro, AR; Denver, CO; Visiting Scholar, CSEL, OSU | Washington, DC; Mount Morris, MI. email: howard.390@osu.edu | Bear arms, or bears harm? www: http://mvhoward.i.am/ +---------------------------------------