Podcast
Philosophize This!
She argues that taking a photograph is an act of objectification, as it freezes a moment and turns it into something that can be appropriated and used. Taking a photo participates in the mortality, vulnerability, and mutability of the subject. It is predatory, violating the subject by seeing them as they do not see themselves.
To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them they can never have. It turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed.
— Episode: Episode #177 ... Susan Sontag - Do you s...
Episode: Episode #177 ... Susan Sontag - Do you speak the l...
She argues that taking a photograph is an act of objectification, as it freezes a moment and turns it into something that can be appropriated and used. Taking a photo participates in the mortality, vulnerability, and mutability of the subject. It is predatory, violating the subject by seeing them as they do not see themselves.
To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them they can never have. It turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed.
Pictures are both a pseudo-presence and a token of absence.
There is something predatory in the act of taking a picture.
To take a photograph is to participate in another person's, or thing's, mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time's relentless melt.