On Photography: the Susan Sontag '70s classic

Just for fun, let's imagine that photography is actually about something more than Canon v Nikon and zone system arcana. Be careful, though, because once you start thinking that way you might actually begin to want a thoughtful guide for your musings.

Susan Sontag is such a guide. In her '70s masterpiece, available in most used book stores for next to nothing, Sontag talks about photography as the dominant visual medium of modern times. She's not content to identify photography as "art," to rehash the old question; she wants to know what art means and what photography means.

In just 200 pages, Sontag deals with it all, from Arbus to Avedon and Steiglitz to Szarkowski. She considers photography's near magical powers -- "To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed," she notes -- and its odd emotional aspects: "There is an aggression implicit in every use of the camera."

Over the past four years I've read "On Photography" cover to cover at least four times, and dip into it randomly more often than that. Her imaginative consideration of the power of photography has done far more to improve my own work than any number of discussions of fill flash technique, lens quality and the need for mirror lock-up.

"On Photography" closes with 20 pages of quotations on photography. One of my favorites:

"As I progressed further with my project, it became obvious that it was really unimportant where I chose to photograph. The particular place simply provided an excuse to produce work. You can only see what you are ready to see -- what mirrors your mind at a particular time." -George Tice