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
The painter constructs, the photographer discloses.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the difference between the roles of a painter and a photographer in art creation.
Susan Sontag highlights the unique approaches of painters and photographers in their art. A painter constructs their vision on canvas, creating an image from imagination and skill, while a photographer reveals what is already present in the world, framing reality in a new way. This distinction underscores the different creative processes involved in these two forms of art, inviting reflection on how artists interpret and present their subjects.
Themes
ArtPhotographyPaintingCreativityImagination
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the creative process in art classes.
More from Susan Sontag
All quotes βScience fiction films are not about science. They are about disaster, which is one of the oldest subjects of art.
Susan SontagRead
Gide and I have attained such perfect intellectual communion that I experience the appropriate labor pains for every thought he gives birth to!
Susan SontagRead
Volume depends precisely on the writer's having been able to sit in a room every day, year after year, alone.
Susan SontagRead
In NY sensuality completely turns into sexuality - no objects for the senses to respond to, no beautiful river, houses, people. Awful smells of the street, and dirt... Nothing except eating, if that, and the frenzy of the bed.
Susan SontagRead
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.
Susan SontagRead
Similar quotes
If that voice that you created that is most alive in the poem isn't carried throughout the whole poem, then I destroy where it's not there, and I reconstruct it so that that voice is the dominant voice in the poem.
Philip LevineRead
I try to make clothes the way Lou Reed does music, with minimal chord changes. It's about giving everything I make a worn, softened feel. It's about an elegance being tinged with the barbaric, the luxury of not caring.
Rick OwensRead
In vain have oceans been squandered on you, in vain the sun, wonderfully seen through Whitmanβs eyes. You have used up the years and they have used up you, and still, and still, you have not written the poem.
Jorge Luis BorgesRead
For the poet the credo or doctrine is not the point of arrival but is, on the contrary, the point of departure for the metaphysical journey.
Joseph BrodskyRead
When I perform, I simply follow the music, and my heart; everything comes from me in a very natural way - it's not a show; and I believe in this way, it also touches the hearts of those in the audience.
Lang LangRead
I can't become another person, no matter how much makeup I wear. Something of your own past, your experiences and personality always comes out in the role, and that makes acting very risky. You're exposed. You always wonder if you can pull it off.
Ken WatanabeRead