Susan Sontag
[Writer, theorist, and critic, b. 1933, New York, d. 2004, New York.]
Let the atrocious images haunt us. Even if they are only tokens, and cannot possibly encompass most of the reality to which they refer, they still perform a vital function. The images say: This is what human beings are capable of doing—may volunteer to do, enthusiastically, self-righteously. Don’t forget.
A photograph is not only an image (as a painting is an image), an interpretation of the real; it is also a trace, something directly stenciled off the real, like a footprint or a death mask.
There is no such thing as a bad photograph—only less interesting, less relevant, less mysterious ones.
Strictly speaking, it is doubtful that a photograph can help us understand anything.
When one has a picture taken, the photographer says “Perfect!” Just as you are! That is death.
No sophisticated sense of what photography is or can be will ever weaken the satisfactions of a picture of an unexpected event seized in mid-action by an alert photographer.
Photography is a kind of overstatement, a heroic copulation with the material world.
Life is a movie. Death is a photograph.