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A photograph is not only an image (as a painting is an image), an interpretation of the real; it is also a trace, something directly stenciled off the real, like a footprint or a death mask.

Susan Sontag

Instead of just recording reality, photographs have become the norm for the way things appear to us, thereby changing the very idea of reality and of realism.
SUSAN SONTAG

Change Ideas Photography Reality
10 percent of any population is cruel, no matter what, and 10 percent is merciful, no matter what, and the remaining 80 percent can be moved in either direction.
SUSAN SONTAG

Change Direction People
To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.
SUSAN SONTAG

Moments Mortal Person Photograph Time
A photograph is not only an image (as a painting is an image), an interpretation of the real; it is also a trace, something directly stenciled off the real, like a footprint or a death mask.
SUSAN SONTAG

Death Painting Photography Reality
To be an artist or a writer is to be this weird thing – a hand worker in an era of mass production.
SUSAN SONTAG

Artist Hands Writing
Intelligence is really a kind of taste: taste in ideas.
SUSAN SONTAG

Ideas Intelligence Kind Taste
Time eventually positions most photographs, even the most amateurish, at the level of art.
SUSAN SONTAG

Art Photograph Time
The fear of becoming old is born of the recognition that one is not living now the life that one wishes.
SUSAN SONTAG

Live Old Oneself Recognition
A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world.
SUSAN SONTAG

Attention Thinking World
A good book is an education of the heart. It enlarges your sense of human possibility what human nature is of what happens in the world. It’s a creator of inwardness.
SUSAN SONTAG

Book Education Goodness Heart World
I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.
SUSAN SONTAG

Encouragement Inspirational Life
Most people in this society who aren’t actively mad are, at best, reformed or potential lunatics.
SUSAN SONTAG

Mad People Potential
Do stuff. be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration’s shove or society’s kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It’s all about paying attention. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager.
SUSAN SONTAG

Attention Connection Inspirational Pay
The only interesting answers are those that destroy the questions.
SUSAN SONTAG

Destroy History
Real art has the capacity to make us nervous.
SUSAN SONTAG

Art Design Real
Photography is an elegiac art, a twilight art. Most subjects photographed are, just by virtue of being photographed, touched with pathos.
SUSAN SONTAG

Art Photography Touch

A photograph is not only an image (as a painting is an image), an interpretation of the real; it is also a trace, something directly stenciled off the real, like a footprint or a death mask.

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A photograph is not only an image (as a painting is an image), an interpretation of the real; it is also a trace, something directly stenciled off the real, like a footprint or a death mask.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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