What is it?

[charleswood]

<p>Lex - "How did we get from abstract impressions, to references..."</p>

<p>Because Julie in her OP gave us an example of a photograph of girls, described in feminine terms the flirtatiousness of the content, and observed that none had as yet spoken directly about that content, giving her the impression that the obvious was either unseen or that "everybody else also see this but feel that it's personal/private or somehow unimportant or to "arty" to confess in a public forum?"</p>

<p>So Lex, would you then like to share? How would you answer what I considered to be a fair question from Julie? Or would you scold her for asking, as you appear to have scolded me for answering?</p>

<p> </p>

[Allen Herbert]

<p>"are you bored stiff"</p>

<p>Yes.</p>

<p>Cannot think of anything to say about it... because it a boring photo without "something", or, anything else.</p>

<p>My old Gran would like because it would remind of her youth...so, I suppose that is something to say.</p>

[floyd_davidson]

<blockquote><b>Julie H:</b><p>

If a picture isn't evidence of something, are you going to look at it; or is evidence of *something* the first requirement of every photograph?</blockquote>

<p>

The original image is very illustrative of several concepts essential to understanding how to critique photography.

<p>

Consider some philosophy about photography that has been around for a few decades. It was terrific that someone in the first thread found and linked to a similarly composed shot by Garry Winogrand, who was a consummate observer of humanity through the lens of a camera. He understood very clearly what he was doing, and he described photographs this way:

<p><br />

<blockquote><b>Garry Winogrand:</b>

<p>

That's a photograph -- They're mute, they don't have any narrative ability at all, you know what something looked like, but you don't know what's happening ... There isn't a photograph in the world that has any narrative ability, any of them.

<p>

<b><i>They do not tell stories</i></b>, they show you what something looks like, through a camera. The minute you relate this thing [indicating the photograph being examined] to what was photographed, it's a lie. It's two dimensional, it's the illusion of a literal description ...

</blockquote><p>Julie, and almost (but not quite) everyone else is looking at the photograph and then commenting on the visions of their own memories that it evokes. Of course everyone has different experiences, so the comments cover a wide range. But the point is they have little to do with the photograph, or what is in it, whether that is a non-existant "story" or if it is "evidence".

<p>

The photographer, Lauren Greenfield, described the body of work the photograph is from as "isolating these very specific and somtimes extreme moments". The significance of that was analyzed decades ago:

<p><br />

<blockquote><b>Susan Sontag, "On Photography":</b><p>To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they

never see themselves, by having knowledge of them that they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be

symbolically possessed. Just as a camera is a sublimation of the gun, to photograph someone is a subliminal murder - a soft

murder, appropriate to a sad, frightened time.</blockquote>

<p>

An instant in time, isolating extremes... is subliminal murder of the real girls that were photographed. And the story is not in that photograph at all. It merely shows what was there as it looks when photographed. The story is only in a compilation of many photographs and the discussion provided by the photographer external to the images.

<p>

So in a sense, yes a photograph has the illusion of evidence, but in fact it is very carefully crafted to appear that way and is never evidence of "reality". The photograph in question is the work of an expert in using visual symbols to convey a desired message, loaded wtih emotional baggage, into the mind of viewers.

<p>

The discussion here doesn't really say much directly about the photograph itself. It does say a great deal indirectly about the ability of Lauren Greenfield to use visual symbols!

[Julie H]

<p>Floyd,</p>

<p>A couple of quick responses:</p>

<p>First, I think Winogrand and Greenfield contradict one another. Second, I don't really mind whether or not Sontag is right about "symbolic possession." If that's what the picture <em>itself</em> gives me, then that's fine with me. What I'm questioning is the photograph's "right" (for lack of a better word) to just be what it is -- and that includes ambiguity and lack of facticity.</p>

<p>By contrast, a painting IS allowed to just be whatever it "looks like." Not only allowed, but expected to. I suggest that a photograph rarely is. It must be "of" something or the viewer is itchy with discontent.</p>

<p>No matter how "carefully crafted" it is, to use your phrase, I find the viewers (including myself in spite of my wish to do otherwise) strain to see "behind" the craft to see what it "really" is.</p>

<p>[Winogrand escapes this issue by being uninterested in the things. He loves the processes, the events, the in-between that's not about identity -- and I have never seen him use any "material" or players that is not obviously identifiable. No abstracts for Garry.]</p>

[floyd_davidson]

<p>Winogrand, Sontag, and Greenfield are all saying the same thing, using different words and coming from a different perspective. It is almost certain that Greenfield is well aware of what the earlier analyst had to say and is choosing her words very carefully in that light.

<p>

I don't really understand what "right" a photograph has? Photographs are just whatever the photographer produced. A photographer has the right to be ambiguous, or not.

<p>

I also don't see the distinction you suggest between painting and photography. There absolutely are differences, but neither is allowed or disallowed to just look like what it does, because there is no other choice. Both necessarily are an image "of something". That something <b>is</b> the image. If it resembles something "real" that resemblance is an illusion, or if you prefer, it is an abstraction. All paintings and all photographs are abstract. None of them can possibly be reality if reality is something else.

<p>

Specifically Winogrand was saying his photography is an abstraction because all photographs are an abstraction. A photograph is never the thing that was photographed, it's an illusion using visual symbols that creates a mental response similar to what something else might produce.

<p>

   "A photograph is the illusion of a literal description <br />

   of how the camera 'saw' a piece of time and space." <br />

        -- Garry Winogrand

 

<p>In other words: all photography is abstract. (And granted that some is more abstract.)

[cyanatic]

<blockquote>

<p><a name="00cDy0"></a><a href="/photodb/user?user_id=6805375">Floyd Davidson</a>, Dec 10, 2013; 07:59 a.m.</p>

</blockquote>

<blockquote>Specifically Winogrand was saying his photography is an abstraction because all photographs are an abstraction.</blockquote>

<blockquote>"A photograph is the illusion of a literal description <br />of how the camera 'saw' a piece of time and space." <br />-- Garry Winogrand

<p>In other words: all photography is abstract. (And granted that some is more abstract.)</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Floyd -- I would have to disagree with your interpretation of both Winogrand's words, and the concept which lies behind them. My opinions only, of course.</p>

<p>To say that a photograph is an illusion of a literal description is <em>not</em> the same as to say that it is abstract. Real or not, an illusion of something literal at least has the "literal" part going for it in terms of the ability of our brain to identify and categorize it. An abstract may, or may not, "suggest" some relationship with a literal object, but its overarching quality is its very lack of recognizable literalness. With good reason, impressionist painters are not categorized as abstract expressionists. Similarly, we do not lump Gary Winogrand and Robert Frank with Minor White and Aaron Siskind.</p>

<p>This is hardly an original observation, but I would go beyond Winogands notion of a photograph as an illusion of a literal reality and suggest that is its own literal reality. In cases where it presents an illusion of a literal object(s), person(s), and moment in time, the reality of it, and the story behind it (I disagree with Winogrand that there is no narrative, particularly in the broad genre of which he was a practitioner) reside with the individual viewer. If they impose a literal interepretation and a storyline, then, whoomp, there it is. (This is a different way at coming at what you said in regard to the Greenfield photograph: <em>"Julie, and almost (but not quite) everyone else is looking at the photograph and then commenting on the visions of their own memories that it evokes. Of course everyone has different experiences, so the comments cover a wide range.)</em></p>

<p>As for Sontag's famous (or infamous) quote regarding photography as a violation and a "soft murder", that is only one way of interpreting a photograph, and a hyperbolic one at that. (I'm not going to plug it with a link here, but I once devoted a blog post to the discussion of violation and exploitation in candid photography. My conclusions, though personal, are vastly different from Sontag's, who I quoted in the article.) I'll gladly take "soft murders" and "subliminal murders" (including my own) for the purpose of creating visual documents and illuminations -- even those that confound, confuse, and anger - of the human condition.</p>

<p>I still haven't addressed some of the items raised in Julie's original post. Hmmm...must go back. </p>

<p> </p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p><em>"I'll gladly take "soft murders" and "subliminal murders" (including my own) for the purpose of creating visual documents and illuminations"</em></p>

<p>I'm not sure this isn't exactly what Sontag would have wanted. When I read her, which is awhile ago, I didn't understand her to be saying photography shouldn't be practiced. I did understand her to be asking photographers to consider carefully what they were doing and the ramifications of their actions, particularly in a cultural context and particularly considering the proliferation of photography in our everyday lives. I think if a photographer, now, is honest with himself about some of the impositions he necessarily makes on others when photographing them, that self awareness is ultimately a good thing for the world. Sontag's was not a proscription against photography, as I see it, but rather an attempt to raise the collective consciousness about its uses and effects.</p>

<p>Regarding the Greenfield photo, I came away from that thread thinking much the same thing as Floyd, that most people were not looking at the photograph and were, instead, swept away by their own relationship not to the content of the photo but of what that content represented to them. It was much more a sociological than a photographic discussion, IMO. The interesting part, to me, is that this is one of the great uses and effects of photography and art in general. It touches our emotions and we're "allowed" to go anywhere we want with it. At the same time, THAT photo of teenage girls is different from OTHER photos of teenage girls. THOSE differences are significant. Many of the responders in that thread, rather than focusing on THAT photo of teenage girls, could have been focusing on ANY photo of teenage girls, because they were mainly addressing TEENAGE GIRLS, not photos of them and not that photo of them.</p>

<p>I think there was more to be gleaned from that photo than what "teenage girl" made us think of. That would require an aesthetic as well as a psychological or sociological approach to the photo. That aesthetic posture toward a photo or painting is a bit more abstract than either a psychological or sociological posture would normally be. The aesthetic posture would include form, color, shadow, line, texture, and how all those relate to the content, creating something that IS and, importantly also, IS NOT "teenage girl." The IS NOT seemed to get lost in a collective concentration on the IS. What a teenage girl IS and what I think about teenage girls seemed to trump what the girls looked like when photographed.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Just look at where the Flatiron Building discussion has now headed. We've moved completely away from the photo and are now discussing the difference between American and Asian architects. While a good photo will often open up the subject matter and move us in all sorts of directions, there's also a chance that our concern with subject matter will distract us from actually looking carefully at and sticking with the photo itself. It took only a day of discussion to get completely away from the actual photo. I consider that a loss, especially in a photo discussion among photographers.</p>

<p>[it could be, however, that the discussions are showing just how much the Off Topic forum is missed here.] :-)</p>

[charleswood]

<p>I think it fair to say that all our perceptions are abstract as fundamentally as Winogrand says a photograph is an abstraction. Perhaps Winogrand makes a distinction without a difference. Why would, or how could (in what circumstances) could an instrument our mind designs and builds be any more capable of rendering 'reality' than the mind that created that instrument? Our mind is an instrument with a lot of imprecision built in.</p>

<p>Try getting a simple yes or no in answer to a simple yes or no question posed to anyone, try that to get an idea of how far the mind seems to instantly wander around. Would anyone be willing to try that?</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p><em>"Try getting a simple yes or no in answer to a simple yes or no question posed to anyone"</em></p>

<p>Are you a man?</p>

<p>Were you born in the U.S.?</p>

<p>Do you have a mother and father?</p>

<p>Surely, we could complicate these questions, and in many cases we do. But in many cases, we don't.</p>

<p>As to your larger question, if both our minds and an instrument we create render reality, we still can offer a difference between our perceptions of each, the thing we perceive on the one hand and the picture of that thing on the other. I experience a difference, in terms of immediacy, between what I see with my own eyes, and what I see when I look at a picture of that thing. While the thing I perceive and the PICTURE I perceive are both on the same level of perception, the thing I perceive IN the picture I perceive, I believe, is a different order of perception. That having been said, I'm a firm believer in the case that art is as much how we see (to begin with) as it is what we make. It does seem like the "real world" is sometimes no different from a picture of it. Then again, sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between a dream and a waking state, especially when we're dreaming, but taking that too far can get us into all sorts of trouble, as Descartes would have seen had he survived long enough to experience all the refutations of his dream thought experiment.</p>

<p>Representations, signs, and symbols must be reckoned with. Isn't there data and metadata?</p>

[charleswood]

<p>Fred - "Isn't there data and metadata?"</p>

<p>I think so.</p>

<p>Sontag from above - "Just as a camera is a sublimation of the gun, to photograph someone is a subliminal murder..."</p>

<p>Let's look at Sontag's use of the words <em>sublimation </em>and<em> subliminal </em>in that sentence fragment<em>.</em><br>

<em> </em><br>

Sublimation definition (emphasis added): Wikipedea - "In psychology, sublimation is a mature type of defense mechanism where socially unacceptable impulses or idealizations are <strong>consciously</strong> transformed into socially acceptable actions or behavior, possibly resulting in a long-term conversion of the initial impulse."</p>

<p>Subliminal definition (emphasis added): (</p>

of a stimulus or mental process) below the threshold of sensation or consciousness; perceived by or affecting someone's mind <strong>without their being aware of it.</strong>

<strong> </strong>

<strong> </strong>

<strong> </strong>

Sontag says sublimation, which by definition means consciously intended, to describe an unconscious intent, a subliminal murder, behind the act of taking a photograph. That description is DOA, voided by her misuse of words. Because something conscious isn't subliminal by definition, and Sontag doesn't offer an explanation of how the conscious intent involved in sublimating a camera into a gun becomes a subliminal and therefore an unconscious soft murder. Of course it doesn't, its none sense. The meta data of her words, of language, brings a lack of clarity to the data she examines with those words.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is another kind of language, the kind we also exhibit, body language. http://coyoteyipps.com/2013/12/10/coyote-connect-by-monique/

 

 

Compare the ambiguity and intrigue in the human videographer to the stark body language of the coyote, that later having no such meta data. The coyote neither comes nor goes, and an agitated neither coming or going describes its inner mental state. It can do but one or the other, and it hasn't decided which to do. Compare to the human: the human wonders out loud: "Do you want to play?" The human misses the mix in the coyote of aggressive approach and active fleeing, the coyote's mind is mind stuck in place, its movement shows that. Yet the human's mind wanders off to irrelevance. Our fellow predator species must flee, or must we, when our paths cross. To find middle ground with a coyote? I don't think it's possible. The thing is, look at the noise a human mind introduces into essentially closed space, the space between two species, between human and coyote.

 

 

So if Julie, other ask or observe that we don't see, don't look, don't react to 'what's there', I have to agree. But its fundamental in us.

 

[Norma Desmond]

<p>I took Sontag to be speaking metaphorically and planting seeds of ideas. When taken literally and dissected as you've done, I can see the problems you have with it. I'd have to read more about the differences between sublimation and subliminal to know how seriously she may have contradicted herself. I think the camera/gun metaphor is useful, as is the shooting/killing metaphor.</p>

<p>What I got when I read Sontag was not so much the exact psychological distinctions or the precise psychological ramifications of what she was talking about and not even so much the cultural issues she was addressing. I personalized it more. For me, a lot of what she is saying has something to do with my own alienation as a photographer, particular as one who photographs other people. That alienation, being aware of it, coming to grips with it, being uncomfortable with it, is energizing.</p>

[charleswood]

<p>I'm exploring the idea that Sontag, like Winogrand, makes a distinction without a difference thusly:</p>

<p>Sontag - "To photograph people is to violate them,"</p>

<p>Me - no more than just looking at a person violates them, and no less than just looking violates.</p>

<p>Sontag - "by seeing them as they never see themselves,</p>

<p>Me - our mind, not just a camera, daily sees others as they never see themselves.</p>

<p>Sontag - "by having knowledge of them that they can never have;"</p>

<p>Me - So we claim when judging others every day.</p>

<p>Sontag "it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed"</p>

<p>And that's my main point, that it isn't the camera or a photograph that turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed. That's what we do with each other without ever taking a picture, symbolically possess them, representing them with mere words for example, or with a remembered mental image.</p>

<p>Since we do all those things anyway without a camera, do we commit soft murder all the time then, so that it isn't unique to photographs? I don't think so.</p>

<p> </p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p><em>Sontag - "To photograph people is to violate them,"</em><br /> <em>Me - no more than just looking at a person violates them, and no less than just looking violates.</em></p>

<p>When Sontag and Winogrand talk about the act of photographing, I think they are assuming a resulting photograph which, to me, makes all the difference in the world.</p>

<p>What's the difference?</p>

<p>The changing, sometimes the robbing, of context.</p>

<p>When I frame someone doing something, through the lens of a camera, I am isolating them from a great deal of their context. Others who will view the photo will not see the greater context that was present when the person was doing whatever they were doing. The significance of many actions and expressions is very much changed when taken out of the context of their original performance.</p>

<p>The violation is not, IMO, in the looking that the camera does, which may be like our eye on some level. The violation, rather, is in the portrait that is created, which has the artifice of being FRAMED. The significance added (or subtracted) by the frame (which the camera provides) is where the violation and murder can come in.</p>

<p>________________________________________</p>

<p><em>Sontag - "by seeing them as they never see themselves,</em><br /> <em>Me - our mind, not just a camera, daily sees others as they never see themselves.</em></p>

<p>With our cameras, we STILL the action. Our minds don't do that daily. Our eyes and minds experience the flow of action, not a stilling of an isolated moment.</p>

<p>_________________________________________________</p>

<p><em>Sontag "it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed"</em></p>

<p>Though we can each do this to others, the camera can relatively easily turn someone into a SHARED object of possession. It not only preserves, but it can turn what was thought to be private very quickly into something public. It's one thing for a boyfriend to objectify a woman by treating her a certain way or looking at her a certain way. It's another for a nude picture you posed for in the quiet of your bedroom to wind up, during an ugly breakup, on the Internet. In the act of photographing is always the potential for the latter.</p>

<p>It's also a matter of degree. We can, indeed, turn others into objects without the benefit of a camera. But please spend some time reading through the "critiques" on the PN nude forum. And see if looking at a PICTURE of a nude woman doesn't exacerbate this tendency or make it just that much more obvious.</p>

<p>We say, metaphorically, that we turn someone into an object by treating them a certain way or thinking of them a certain way. Photographing someone yields that LITERALLY (a 2-dimensional <em>object</em> with four corners). That photographing results in a literal object has an affect on so-called objectification.</p>

[floyd_davidson]

<blockquote><b>Fred G:</b><p><i>Sontag - "To photograph people is to violate them,"</i><br />

Me - no more than just looking at a person violates them, and no less than just looking violates.

<p>

When Sontag and Winogrand talk about the act of photographing, I think they are assuming a resulting photograph which, to me, makes all the difference in the world.</blockquote>

<p>

It does seem that quoting specific lines has caused some to misinterpret what was actually being discussed, which as you are pointing out is in fact the effect of photographs. But even you are ignoring that with your opening comment that it is not different than just looking. It is vastly different! We don't remember just a single exposure at 1/100 of a second, we remember the abstracted impression integrated over the entire time we viewed them. And even if that is relatively short it still doesn't equate to the same as a photograph because it exists only in the mind of a single person (and probably not sharply so even then). The photograph can have a hugely more pervasive significance, which is of course what Sontag in specific was analyzing, and relatively is what Winogrand was waxing about in terms of his own photography. A photograph published on the cover of Newsweek Magazine, the NYTimes front page, or even if it merely made it into an art exhibition is seen by multitudes and is captured forever in the many minds that see it. It's the multitudes that Sontag was discussing. She was describing changes to cultures across the globe that had resulted from massive distribution of imagery. (And that was before the Internet!)

<p>And even for the person who makes a snapshot for the family album, we can be assured that a decade or two later the only real memory of that period of time spent with the subject of the photograph is not going to be from what was seen then, but will be made up of the effect of reviewing the snapshot one or many many times as the years pass. What we see just doesn't have nearly the effect of what we photograph.

<p><br />

<blockquote><b>Fred G:</b><p>What's the difference?

<p>

The changing, sometimes the robbing, of context.

<p>

When I frame someone doing something, through the lens of a camera, I am isolating them from a great deal of their context. Others who will view the photo will not see the greater context that was present when the person was doing whatever they were doing. The significance of many actions and expressions is very much changed when taken out of the context of their original performance.

<p>

The violation is not, IMO, in the looking that the camera does, which may be like our eye on some level. The violation, rather, is in the portrait that is created, which has the artifice of being FRAMED. The significance added (or subtracted) by the frame (which the camera provides) is where the violation and murder can come in.

</blockquote>

<p>But of course the "portrait that is created" is the effect of "the looking that the camera does". That is what Winogrand meant by "Photography is not about the thing photographed. It is about how that thing looks photographed."

And that is what Sontag meant by " it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed". Photography is a communications media using visual symbols to transfer the photographer's concepts into the mind of the viewer. What the viewer can see in any photograph is only a set of symbols generated from the "objects" the camera has "symbolically possessed".

<p>

And as you are indicating, that is absent any context that the camera excludes. It is a skill on the part of the photographer to frame a subject with some specific context in a way that makes the symbolized object attractive to the viewer. That is "good composition". And editing, such as dodging and burning, is how context is made more dominant or less dominant.

<p><br />

<blockquote><b>Fred G:</b>

<p><i>Sontag - "by seeing them as they never see themselves,</i><br />

Me - our mind, not just a camera, daily sees others as they never see themselves.

<p>

With our cameras, we STILL the action. Our minds don't do that daily. Our eyes and minds experience the flow of action, not a stilling of an isolated moment.

</blockquote>

<p>

I don't think Sontag meant it in the way you interpret it in the first sentence. It was meant only in the sense you describe as unique to a camera. A person can see, of others and of themselves, only an effect integrated over time. The camera differentiates, and presents that as the definition of the object. Very different "seeing".

<p><br />

<blockquote><b>Fred G:</b>

<p><i>Sontag: it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed"</i>

<p>

Though we can each do this to others, the camera can relatively easily turn someone into a SHARED object of possession. It not only preserves, but it can turn what was thought to be private very quickly into something public. It's one thing for a boyfriend to objectify a woman by treating her a certain way or looking at her a certain way. It's another for a nude picture you posed for in the quiet of your bedroom to wind up, during an ugly breakup, on the Internet. In the act of photographing is always the potential for the latter.

<p>

It's also a matter of degree. We can, indeed, turn others into objects without the benefit of a camera. But please spend some time reading through the "critiques" on the PN nude forum. And see if looking at a PICTURE of a nude woman doesn't exacerbate this tendency or make it just that much more obvious.

<p>

We say, metaphorically, that we turn someone into an object by treating them a certain way or thinking of them a certain way. Photographing someone yields that LITERALLY (a 2-dimensional object with four corners). That photographing results in a literal object has an affect on so-called objectification.

</blockquote><p>

Exactly. Every photograph has potential to redefine someone in a way that is neither accurate nor complimentary.

 

In addition to critiques in the nude forum... my goodness, just read what was said about 4 teenage girls in a picture presented to this forum! Everyone seemed to see the symbols the photographer intended, but then they grade the photograph itself and all discussion of it according to moral triggers those symbols tripped.

 

[Julie H]

<p>Sontag is so thoroughly last century ...</p>

<p>I give you a vignette (from memory, so probably not perfectly accurate). I'm watching the documentary on photojournalist James Nachtwey, <em><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Photographer">War Photographer</a></em>. He's in Bosnia during that terrible conflict, and he's shooting families -- I'm remembering in particular a group of very old women, as they have seen/heard of the massacre of family members. Nachtwey is shooting with a wide lens -- he gets in very, very close -- he's about two feet from their faces. And while he's shooting (and a documentary film crew is simultaneously shooting him shooting them), you can see the wailing women <em>adjusting themselves for the camera</em> -- renewing the intensity, the angle, the quality of their visual presentation. These people have no need to lie -- the truth is already unspeakably horrible; their grief is already (naturally) visible, and yet they "work" the photographer as much as he "works" their scene.</p>

<p>Who is redefining whom here? And if you can't tell (if it looks like the subject was caught unawares, possibly in a cruel way), then that very "can't tell" casts the viewers mind back to the photographer as much as it does to what was "done" to the subject.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Floyd,</p>

<p>I have an older version of Safari which doesn't allow me to use the block quote function which puts others' words into a gray box. Sorry if that causes confusion. The lines I put in italics were quotes from Charles W. in this thread and my posts were responses to what he said. From now on I will put the person's name in front of the quote of theirs I put in italics for more clarity.</p>

<p>I think you got the essence of what I was saying. And thanks for your thoughts. The initial lines which I put in italics were me quoting Charles W. He quoted a line from Sontag and then added the "Me" line with his own restatement of her line. I was disagreeing with him. I started by quoting his quote of Sontag and his response to Sontag. Again, what's in italics in my post is my quoting of Charles and not what I think. What I think follows in regular type in the longer paragraphs.</p>

<p>So for example, when you say:</p>

<p><em>"But even you are ignoring that with your opening comment that it is not different than just looking."</em></p>

<p>I have not made that opening comment. I quoted Charles, who made it. As you read my own words, you will see that, like you, I think photographing is very much different from just looking.</p>

<p>In any case, throughout the rest of your post you do seem to recognize what are my own thoughts and they are pretty similar to yours.</p>

<p>Thanks again for your comments.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Julie,</p>

<p>Good point, but I'm not sure why that makes Sontag last century, other than that she did live in the last century, as did many worthwhile thinkers. That we may attribute adjustments and playing for the camera to subjects of photos doesn't really change the fact that photographers can violate their subjects. Subjects can, of course, be complicit in the violation or can be the originator of a lie. It's an addition to Sontag. Not a rejection of her.</p>

[floyd_davidson]

<blockquote><b>Fred G.:</b><p>I have an older version of Safari which doesn't allow me to use the block quote function which puts others' words into a gray box. Sorry if that causes confusion. The lines I put in italics were quotes from Charles W. in this thread and my posts were responses to what he said. From now on I will put the person's name in front of the quote of theirs I put in italics for more clarity.</blockquote><p><br />

<p>My apologies for not catching that. I did see the change in view, but didn't catch on to why it was changing!

<p>Photo.net, like every forum, has it's own quirks about what can and can't be done with the editor. I had to experiment a bit with hand coding HTML to figure out how to do things in ways that I want. (I do a bit of professional typesetting, and hence I am perhaps more critical and also more insistant on style than most would be.)

<p>I literally hand type all of the HTML tags into the editor window. To quote the text above what I entered was as shown below:

<p>

〈blockquote〉〈b〉Fred G.:〈/b〉〈p〉I have an older version of Safari ... in italics for more clarity.〈/blockquote〉〈p〉〈br /〉

<p>

The trailing tag, 〈br /〉 puts a vertical space after the quoted text.

[floyd_davidson]

<blockquote><b>Fred G.</b><p>It's an addition to Sontag. Not a rejection of her.</blockquote>

<p>

Isn't that a demonstration of exactly what Sontag was analyzing to begin with? The effect of massive imagery made available via photography and cinematography has changed cultures and dulled our senses when it comes to such things as war. Instead of sorrow and morning the horrors of war, people pose for the camera to be seen "appropriately".

<p>

Sontag may have lived in the last century, but that particular discussion is still <b>now</b> in this century.

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Floyd, yes, good points. As I said, I read Sontag a while ago and thought I remembered her approaching it more from the point of view of the photographer as the main culprit, as opposed to the culture of photography itself. But what you say also rings true from my recollection of reading <em>On Photography</em>.</p>

<p>One interesting example I can think of are the photos from Abu Ghraib. The dullness of the senses (to be exceptionally kind) of those doing the photographing is obvious. And yet, the surfacing of those photos brought to light the kinds of torture and humiliation the military was engaging in.</p>

<p>My own point would be that while photography can dull the senses and be violative, it is also a great means of artistic expression, documentary communication, and provides a record of things that might not otherwise be known to the world at large.</p>

[Julie H]

<p>Our senses aren't "dulled." We just know how/when to give them away to strangers. Nachtwey gets what they give, not what he takes.</p>

[charleswood]

<p>One other point about Sontag's wording. Murder isn't murder unless it's intentional. So "subliminal murder" is a contradiction in terms because she is in effect saying "unintentional intentionality " when she says "to photograph someone is a subliminal murder".</p>

<p>Fred - "Photographing someone yields that LITERALLY (a 2-dimensional <em>object</em> with four corners). That photographing results in a literal object has an affect on so-called objectification."</p>

<p>Ok that makes perfect sense, that a photograph is an object with an objectification within its frame. Takes on a life of its own. In that sense it may be fair to say there is soul stealing involved.</p>

<p>With respect to the photographs of nude women. Yes that's an objectification, but where does Sontag's analytical terms lead me? Just in passing: would she call it subliminal objectification? but for nude women photos it's intentional objectification. Following her down the path, I also wouldn't then say that the nude women models are subliminally committing suicide by allow the objectifying photograph to be taken, wouldn't say they are committing a soft suicide, not with intention, not without intention. I just don't like Sontag's terms.</p>

<p>As an object containing a symbolic representation of a woman without clothing, the photograph is property that one can hold in one's hand, possess. It is fantasy materialized and I would look more to fantasy as a phenomenon, the lengths to which fantasy will go to materialize, than to how fantasy's desire is accomplished, i.e., by drawing, photographing, sculpting. Fantasy has a life of its own and it is a very serious question to ask "Who possesses whom?" of the person that in one hand holds a photographic apparition of a goddess or god.</p>

<p>Thanks to Frank for all and for "She was describing changes to cultures across the globe that had resulted from massive distribution of imagery. (And that was before the Internet!)"</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Charles, I often find myself disagreeing with the terms a philosopher or writer uses and even often find flaws with the soundness of their logic. But that doesn't mean, for me, that the general points they are making are invalidated. As a matter of fact, with the really good philosophers and thinkers, it makes me want to aid their arguments by finding better terms to use or more sound arguments, close to theirs, to make. If, indeed, it is the terms that you are finding contradictory in Sontag, I urge you to search for the gestalt of her writing and see if there's a way, by using other terms than "subliminal" and "sublimation" that you find less contradictory that might still preserve the basic themes Sontag is exploring, which still seem to have significance. If the hyperbole, colorful analogies, and sometimes confused or confusing terminology is going to sink such a writer, then Kant, Plato, Heidegger, and a lot of others will have to fall as well. </p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Charles, since you don't like the "murder" analogy or what you perceive to be a contradiction in "subliminal" and "sublimate", what if we look again at a more positive use of or result from the act of photographing, where it seems to me very different from the act of looking. Imagine if the folks at Abu Ghraib had just looked at the torture they and their fellow evildoers were perpetrating. Isn't there a significant difference in the fact that they <em>photographed</em> the goings-on as opposed to just <em>looking</em>?</p>