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
Needing to have reality confirmed and experience enhanced by photographs is an aesthetic consumerism to which everyone is now addicted. Industrial societies turn their citizens into image-junkies; it is the most irresistible form of mental pollution.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote critiques society's obsession with photographs and images as a form of consumerism that affects our perception of reality.
Susan Sontag's quote reflects on the contemporary human condition, where the constant need for photographic evidence influences our understanding of reality. She argues that this reliance on images transforms individuals into 'image-junkies', leading to a form of addiction that diminishes genuine experience and creates a cycle of mental pollution, as people increasingly value images over authentic interactions and realities.
Themes
PhotographyConsumerismRealitySocietyMental Pollution
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about modern consumer culture.
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
It was the contemplation of God that created men who were equal, for it was in God that they were equal.
Antoine De Saint-ExuperyRead
for Mercutio's soul Is but a little way above our heads, Staying for thine to keep him company: Either thou, or I, or both, must go with him.
William ShakespeareRead
When I grew up in the South, I was taught that segregation was the will of God, and the Bible was quoted to prove it. I was taught that women were by nature in inferior to men, and the Bible was quoted to prove it. I was taught that it was okay to hate other religions, and especially the Jews, and the Bible was quoted to prove it.
John Shelby SpongRead
There can be no prescription old enough to supersede the Law of Nature and the grant of God Almighty, who has given to all men a natural right to be free, and they have it ordinarily in their power to make themselves so, if they please.
James OtisRead
So certainly, if we can tell evil stories to make people sick, we can also tell good myths that make them well.
Rainer Werner FassbinderRead
…gender is not sane. It's not sane to call a rainbow black and white.
Kate BornsteinRead