Abstract:
A photograph is not just as a results of an encounter between an event and a photo9rapher~
picture-taking is an event in itself, and one with
ever more peremptory ri9hts to interfere with,
to invade, or to ignore whatever is going on. Our
very sense of situation is now articulated by the
camera's interventions. The omnipresence of cameras
persuasively suggests that time consists of
interestinq events, events worth photoqraphing."
" All photographs are MOMENTO MORI. To take a
photoqraph is to participate in another person's
mortality, vulnerability, and mutability. Precisely
by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all
photoqraphs testify to time's relentless melt. "
This quotation is to be found in Susan Sontag's
book SUSAN SONTAG ON PHOTOGRAPHY ; 1977 ; Page 11
and 15.
By this, it is evident that since 1977 and lonq
before that, photoqraphy, in principle do not
chanqe. It is still practicinq the riqht to
interfere, whatever is happeninq or whoever had to
be photoqraphed.By making a permanent record, photographs allow the
viewer to study the detail he would have probably
overlooked; as the human eye darts from point to
point, nlvlr studyln9 carefully all the aspects of
the scenery in detail.
Nowhere in the field of photography is there a
greater need for perceptive eye and sensitive
understanding than in people's photography.
posing and lighting the model may be done with
exact care; your technical skill with the camera
may be fla'-wless and your exposure perfect but
unless you have an incisive ability to probe
blneath thl surface and delineate the subject's
true personality, you will produce nothing more
than a competent photograph of a mask.
The limit of photographic knowledge of the world is
that, while it can, finally, never be ethical or
political knowledge. Therefore the knowledge gained
through still photographs will always be some kind
sentimentalism, whether cynical or humanists.
By showing mankind, it reveals man's potential or
the image of man contemplating his potential.
