Like the collector, the photographer is animated by a passion that, even when it appears to be for the present, is linked to a sense of the past.
Susan SontagRead
In America, the photographer is not simply the person who records the past, but the one who invents it.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that photographers play a crucial role in shaping narratives about the past through their images.
Susan Sontag's quote emphasizes the influential power of photographers in the interpretation and presentation of history. Rather than merely documenting events as they occurred, photographers actively curate and 'invent' the narratives that surround their subjects, thus shaping public perception and memory of the past.
In practice
In a discussion about the influence of art on society, one might reference this quote to illustrate how photography shapes historical narratives.
Like the collector, the photographer is animated by a passion that, even when it appears to be for the present, is linked to a sense of the past.
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Volume depends precisely on the writer's having been able to sit in a room every day, year after year, alone.
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It hurts to love. It's like giving yourself to be flayed and knowing that at any moment the other person may just walk off with your skin.
To be an artist is to fail, as no other dare fail, that failure is his world and the shrink from desertion, art and craft, good housekeeping, living.
My father was a painter and he taught art. He once said to me, 'I never knew an Indian child who could not draw.'
Next to him lay his violin, trampled, an eerily poignant little corpse.
When I am writing best, I really am lost in my world. I lose track of the outside world. I have a difficult time balancing between my real world and the artificial world.
In 'Hamilton,' we're telling the stories of old, dead white men, but we're using actors of color, and that makes the story more immediate and more accessible to a contemporary audience.
The best comedy and horror feel like they take place in reality. You have a rule or two you are bending or heightening, but the world around it is real.
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