“To photograph people is to violate them… It turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed”
-Susan Sontag, ‘On Photography’
The ‘Rape’ In PhotographyIn an interview last year, Johnny Depp was asked what it was like to pose for the cover of Vanity Fair. “Well it just feels like you’re being raped somehow” he said, taking his reputation for eccentricity further.
Though hearing the word “rape” used in such a context may seem unnecessary, ignorant and even vulgar, Depp’s statement is food for thought when paralleled with Susan Sontag’s recent ideas on the nature of photography. In On Photography, Sontag judges that there is a similarity between photographing someone and violating them. She brings up the idea of a photograph as a tool of symbolic possession, a thought that stirs up discomfort among photography enthusiasts everywhere. Photography is supposed to be art, no? Beautiful, raw and truthful? It seems that Sontag would think this is sheer naivete; she is aware of the negative power involved with the photographic craft.
Her thoughts on photography and its power to violate, to overtake, to disarm, and to render a subject uncomfortable become even more interesting once applied to things like the paparazzi. Suddenly it all makes much more sense. The camera becomes an instrument of dominance.
In an essay responding to Sontag’s book, photographer Christian Molidor puts things concisely,
“Sontag discusses in the six essays not only the philosophical question of how reality may be perceived and knowledge gained, but she also reviews photography in its context: as a tool, an industry, an activity that “imposes a way of seeing” and therefore, actually alters reality. Sontag sees that photography, leveling everything, also beautifies. Let the subject be what it will - pollution, death, war … photography will tend to make it look aesthetically pleasing…
To take a photograph, Sontag writes, “is to appropriate the thing photographed.” This concept of getting-in-order-to-use-up is important in understanding photography’s function. The appropriation, the stealing without touching, the having a semblance of knowledge, she likens to perversion.”
Click the photo to read more of this article, one that I found to be quite interesting. It is difficult to deny that Sontag is on to something, and it becomes even more evident when placed in the framework of today’s celebrity culture.
I don’t care about celebrities or paparazzi or any of that, but I do know the sense of possesing someone/thing (or even a place in time) by taking photos of it.
(via nouvelle-nouveau)