Archive for the ‘On Photography’ Tag
Tourist In Other People’s Reality (1974) — a caricature of kenne
In 1974 an artist friend I worked with at a publishing company drew this caricature of me trying to include all the things he felt identified with me. For a long time, it hung on the wall in my office(s). One day I used a sharpy and wrote on the glass of the framed poster, “I’m a tourist in other people’s reality,” which sums up my life. I borrowed the line from Susan Sontag’s book (On Photography), “The camera makes everyone a tourist in other people’s reality, and eventually in one’s own.”
— kenne
Pinned on the wall in the drawing is the Edmund Burke quote:
“No men can act with effect who do not act in concert;
no men can act in concert who do not act with confidence;
no men can act with confidence who are not bound together
with common opinions, common affections, and common interests.”
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Greater Roadrunner Sitting On Nest In A Cholla Cacti — Image by kenne
A capitalist society requires a culture based on images.
It needs to furnish vast amounts of entertainment in order to
stimulate buying and anesthetize the injuries of class, race, and sex.”
— from “On Photography” by Susan Sontag
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This is the 4,000th posting on this WordPress blog, Becoming Is Superior Being — Image by kenne
After two years of blogging on Yahoo’s now defunct, Yahoo 360, I began blogging on WordPress.com April 2008. This posting marks number 4,000.
“The photographer is always trying to colonize new experiences or find new ways to look at familiar subjects — to fight against boredom. For boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other. ‘The Chinese have a theory that you pass through boredom into fascination,’ Arbus noted.” (Diane Arbus)
— from On Photography by Susan Sontag
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Tear Drops Keep Falling — Image by kenne
Tear Drops Keep Falling
After saying our farewells
Keeping it private.
— kenne
Turner’s Notes
“In a world ruled by photographic images, all borders (“framing”) seem arbitrary.
Anything can be separated, can be made discontinuous from anything else:
all that is necessary is to frame the subject differently.”
— Susan Sontag
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Winter Morning — by kenne
I didn’t get up this Christmas Eve morning thinking about Susan Sontag, that is, not until receiving an email from brother tom.
The book about Eugene Smith reminded me of Susan Sontag and her book: ON PHOTOGRAPHY. Robert Hughes did a splendid review of her book in 1977. You will enjoy how beautifully Hughes captures it. t.
Of course, he knew I would enjoy Hughes’ review of one of my favorite books! Even more so when the title of the review is “Books: A Tourist in Other People’s Reality,” a phase I have used for years to describe my existence. Here’s my reply to tom:
t,
I love this book — it is one that grows with you.
“Recently, photography has become almost as widely practiced an amusement as sex and dancing — which means that, like every mass art form, photography is not practiced by most people as an art,” wrote Sontag — sad but true. For me, it has always been a tool for expressing my vision of existence. The realism of a photograph is superficial since, in truth, it is inherently surreal. As Sontag points out, “Surrealism lies at the heart of the photographic enterprise.”
I don’t know if I should thank you for sending this or not. I already have so much I want to read — now I feel a need to go back and reread this great book on photography.
ken
On Photography is a must-read for any photographer. Thank you, tom, for the distraction!
— kenne
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