To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themself, by having knowledge of them they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be simbolically possessed.
just as the camera is a sublimation of the gun, to photograph someone is a sublimated murder - a soft murder, appropriate to a sad, frightened time....
Susan Sontag
4 comments:
I wonder how this applies today, when the democratisation of publishing has progressed so far.
I think that still apply.
The way we look at a photograph might have changed, but what about the way we take the photo?
the act of shooting.
I know. It's a minefield.
Which is a bit of a Freuduan slip, possibly..
What I mean is that, as always, the exploited are the ones without access to the new technology of the day.
So where cameras are ubiquitous, as they are becoming in the new Communications Economies, the exploitation begins to cancel itself out. Almost as in the grim frontier scenario where everyone carries a gun. And it is the Communications Third World - the poor - who are exploited with photography, who have their images used by others for profit, or have their identities manipulated for the gratification of a leisured minority, or sold to feed endless hunger of consumerism for images, or used to ease the resulting mass guilt and subconscious self-disgust.
Anyway.
You were asking about how we take the photo. Don't get me started.
I'm a great believer that the viewfinder method has changed a lot. On the one hand it enables us all to be more interactive with people, like a virtual Twin Lens wedding photographer. But on the other hand it can also make us sneakier.
Incedeantally. There's a load of this kind of stuff going on here, if you're interested.
http://littlerichardjohn.blogspot.com/2007/11/digital-photography-notes.html
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