Archive for the ‘Susan Sontag’ Tag
Francisco Goya, from The Disasters of War Series (First Edition of 1863) — National Galleries of Scotland
In 1994, Susan Sontag wrote in Transforming Vision — Writers On Art, edited by Edward Hirsch, on The Disasters of War by Francisco.
“The images are relentless, unforgiving. That is, they do not forgive us—who are merely being shown, but do not live in the house of pain.
The images tell us we have no right not to pay attention to pay attention to the crimes of this order which are taking place right now.
And the captions—mingling the voices of the murders, who think of themselves as warriors, and the lamenting artist-witness—mutter and wail.
The problem is despair. For it is not simple that this happened: Zaragoza, Chinchon, Madrid (1808-13). It is happening Vucovar,
Mostar, Srebrenica, Srebrenica, Stupni Do, Sarajevo (1991– ).” Note: The images and captions are meant to awaken, shock, rend. Yet the list of wars continues with Ukraine.
“Here in the words of some of the captions is what they show:
One cannot look at this.
This is bad.
This is how it happened.
This always happens .
There is not one to help them.
With or without reason.
He defends himself well.
He deserved it.
Bury them snd keep them quiet.
There was nothing to be done and he died.
What madness!
This is too much!
Why?
Nobody knows why.
Not in this case either.
This is worse.
Barbaria
This is the absolute worst!
It will be the same.
All this and more.
The same thing elsewhere.
Perhaps they are of another breed.
I see it.
And this too.
Truth has died.
This is the truth.”
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I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking,
what I’m looking at,
what I see and what it means.
What I want and what I fear.
— from Why I Write by Joan Didion
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Mountain Shadows (Santa Catalina Mountains) — Image by kenne
“Today everything exists to end in a photograph.”
— Susan Sontag
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Doubtful Pass In The Peloncillo Mountains — Image by kenne
The camera makes everyone a tourist in other people’s reality, and eventually in one’s own.
— Susan Sontag
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Audrey (July 2019) — Image by kenne
“Do stuff.
Be clenched, curious.
Not waiting for inspiration’s shove
or society’s kiss on your forehead.
Pay attention.
It’s all about paying attention.
Attention is vitality.
It connects you with others.
It makes you eager. stay eager.”
― Susan Sontag
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Tucson Basin — Photo-Artistry by kenne
“Remembering is an ethical act, has ethical value in and of itself. Memory is,
achingly, the only relation we can have with the dead. So the belief that
remembering is an ethical act is deep in our natures as humans, who know
we are going to die, and who mourn those who in the normal course of
things die before us—grandparents, parents, teachers, and older friends.”
— Susan Sontag
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Geo-Wall (Sonoran Desert)– Photo-Artistry by kenne
Wildflowers take growth
In the least likely places
Life’s random nature.
— kenne
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La Paz, Bolivia (08/17/19) — Image by kenne
“Narratives can make us understand.
Photographs do something else: they haunt us.”
― Susan Sontag
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“Bee On Yellow Flower” — Image by kenne
“Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers.
The question of what to do with the feelings that have been aroused,
the knowledge that has been communicated. If one feels
that there is nothing ‘we’ can do — but who is that ‘we’? —
and nothing ‘they’ can do either — and who are ‘they’ —
then one starts to get bored, cynical, apathetic.”
― from Regarding the Pain of Others by Susan Sontag
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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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Richardson’s Geranium Wildflower — Photo-Artistry by kenne
If literature has engaged me as a project, first as a reader,
then as a writer, it is an extension of my sympathies to
other selves, other domains, other dreams, other worlds, other territories.
— Susan Sontag
(I’m currently reading Benjamin Moser’s latest book, “Sontag — Her Life and Work.)
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Bee On A Desert Chicory Wildflower — Photo-Artistry by kenne
“The primitive notion of the efficacy of images
presumes that images possess the qualities of real things,
but our inclination is to attribute real things the quality of images.”
— Susan Sontag
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The Photographer — Photo-Artistry by kenne
“In America,
the photographer is not simply
the person who records the past,
but the one who invents it.”
— Susan Sontag
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Mushroom Photo-Artistry by kenne
Perhaps nothing about a person is more potent,
and also more arbitrary, than the person’s name.
— Susan Sontag
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Two-Tailed Swallowtail Butterflies — Photo-Artistry by kenne
The camera makes everyone a tourist in other people’s reality,
and eventually in one’s own.
— Susan Sontag
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Becoming is Superior to Being 