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
Photographs are a way of imprisoning reality, understood as recalcitrant, inaccessible; of making it stand still. One can't possess reality, one can possess (and be possessed by) images — as, according to Proust, most ambitious of voluntary prisoners, one can't possess the present but one can possessthe past.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects on the nature of photography as a means to capture and hold onto reality, which is otherwise fleeting and elusive.
Susan Sontag's quote explores the paradox of photography: while it allows us to capture moments and memories, it simultaneously indicates that we can never truly hold onto reality itself. Photography serves as a tool for preserving our perceptions of the world, but it highlights the limitations of those images in truly representing the present, as we can only ever refer back to what has already transpired, making us prisoners of our captured past.
Themes
PhotographyRealityImagesPastPerception
In practice
Example use cases
In a presentation on the impact of photography on art appreciation.
More from Susan Sontag
All quotes →Science 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
When I stand before a canvas, I never know what I'll do, and I am the first one surprised at what comes out.
Joan MiroRead
The defect in wisdom and taste which exists among the majority of dancers is due to the bad education which they generally receive. They apply themselves only to the material side of their art, they learn to jump more or less high, they strive mechanically to execute a number of steps, and like children, who utter a great many words devoid of sense and relation, they execute many phrases of steps devoid of taste and grace.
Jean-Georges NoverreRead
The realists do not take the photograph for a 'copy' of reality, but for an emanation of past reality, a magic, not an art.
Roland BarthesRead
Nothing in art should seem accidental, not even movement
Edgar DegasRead
I aspire to a poetry of great formal integrity, deep passion and high intellect, and I have many models for how to do that.
Edward HirschRead
Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition.
Jack KerouacRead