Thoughts on Reading susan sontag's Theory of Photography

After reading a book carefully, everyone must gain a lot. At this time, the key feeling of reading is that you can't forget. Maybe you have no idea now. The following are my thoughts collected when I read susan sontag's Theory of Photography, hoping to help everyone.

On Photography is the product of a series of articles published by American writer and critic Sontag in the New York Book Review. Instead of explaining the theory of photography and quoting a lot of technical terms, the book inadvertently explains the essence of photography in the form of dialogue with itself. After reading this book, the author is interested in the dialectical unity of authenticity and deception of photography in the book, so I want to talk about some simple views and opinions.

Today, photography plays an increasingly important role in people's lives, and this ominous complaint has gradually become a reality. Images have become the most effective way to explain reality. People began to appreciate the experience from the images, find fun from the images and appreciate the world from the photos, but the deception contained in the photos was gradually ignored. So that these seemingly real things replaced the real things, and the image world slowly shrouded the real world with a mist.

1, image and experience

Sontag said in his book that "photography has a promise from the beginning: democratize all experiences by transforming them into images." With the development of industrial technology, this commitment is becoming more and more obvious in our world. With the continuous simplification of shooting methods, people use cameras as the best tool to record their lives, because the image remains much clearer and longer than that of memento mori in our brains. However, in this era of focusing on camera recording, the experience value behind its photos is constantly diluted.

"We have seen ghosts, but we didn't tremble; We stand in front of the royal family, but we don't have to expose ourselves. " This is the world we see through a three-inch lens, replacing experience with images and other impressions with vision. Even if the photo itself is highly restored, its existence form and the experience it gives itself imply deception, such as family photos. Earlier, we took family photos to celebrate the reunion, but with the increasing proportion of its recording significance, the significance of paper family photos is greater than the reunion itself. People hold a photo with a group of people to introduce the wealth of the family to others, but no one wants to know, and even the photographer himself forgets the emotional communication and intimate relationship between people in this photo. This is especially true for tourism. It is unnatural for "modern people" to travel without a camera. People look for scenery with their cameras on their backs, so that they can occupy the scenery with their cameras. In fact, people use photos instead of experiences and photos instead of landscapes. The end of a journey is often accompanied by the output of a large number of images, or landscapes, or people. But after careful reflection, this trip only brought the image itself. Therefore, while taking photos as a way to verify our experience, we are also a way to reject it-just limit our experience to finding the right subject and turning it into an image and a souvenir.

At the same time, photography makes all experiences equal. Images bring us many incomprehensible experiences, which makes us think that we can arouse the consciousness of "empathy" through the understanding of photos. Indeed, these photos may arouse our moral consciousness, and may make us feel shocked and moved, but they do not constitute knowledge in themselves, and they cannot help us understand the world more deeply as people think. On the contrary, everything that should awaken a strong moral reaction is gradually numb and diluted by people because of the popularity of images. Moreover, we believe too much in the authenticity of the experience in photos and are used to understanding the world with qualitative effects, which makes the so-called experience deviate from itself. We have experience through photos, so all unique experiences are democratized through photos.

In modern society, photography has gradually replaced experience, and the events felt from photos have replaced the process of backpacking. However, it is not known how many real components the photo itself contains. So to a certain extent, the popularization and development of photography technology has also become a tool to convey the so-called "real" experience.

2. Images and evidence

Photographs provide evidence. In modern society, people are used to obtaining evidence with cameras and looking for evidence of the existence of facts from photos. This is also because compared with other forms, photos are the closest thing to reality, which can be said to be the product of the divergence of light and shadow in the world itself. It is not only an explanation of reality, but also a trace printed directly from real things. So photos are usually regarded as indisputable evidence that something happened. In my opinion, this may also be the reason why the modern archives require me to attach my photo.

However, it should be noted that people do not have enough confidence in words and pictures, because these "copied" things are somewhat suspected of tampering with their prototypes, while photos are unconsciously promoted to the same height as the "original". When the photo appears as evidence in the "original" itself, how to understand the deception it contains? I have seen a film directed by Nolan, Memento, and its plot is probably like this: the protagonist finds himself suffering from a rare "short-term amnesia", and he can only remember what happened ten minutes ago. In order to let his life go on, and even to avenge his tragic wife, he saved his memory and collected it with tattooing, notes, polaroids and other odds and ends. This is a typical case with photos as evidence. Throughout the film, he constantly recalls what he did and thought at that time through the images in the photos, thus constantly filling in his memory deficiency, but gradually pieced together a story that is quite different from the facts or even completely opposite. So it is very dangerous to rely too much on photos to find truth. Indeed, photos are enough to provide evidence, but photos cannot be used as evidence. Any image is subject to its photographer, that is to say, it is mixed with certain personal feelings and may be distorted and falsified, so the authenticity of the photo content needs to be studied. But photos can provide us with a hypothesis that something exists or once existed, as shown in the photos. If we can clearly distinguish the relationship between photos and reality and realize the unity of authenticity and deception in images, we can maximize their value.

3. Images and the world

Writer D P has this comment on photography: "We crossed the Andes; Tenerife, mt Enter Japan; Been to Niagara Falls and Thousand Islands; Enjoy the fun of fighting with peers; Sitting in a powerful meeting; Close to the king, emperor and queen, the heroine of opera, the darling of ballet and the "charming actor" ... In short, we watch every grandeur and glitz of this evil but beautiful world through a three-inch lens. "

Indeed, photography is a means of collecting the world. Photography is different from literature and painting. It is not a description of the world, but the world itself. The most brilliant achievement of photography enterprises is to give us a feeling that we can store the whole world in our minds-just like an image collection. We can't reach every corner of the world, but the development of photography technology has left a certain proof of existence all over the world. This is a photograph. And we watch photos, trying to integrate ourselves into them, and experience a kind of spiritual possession, which leads us to cross the vast waters of Qian Shan and piece together a new world map as an outsider. The camera breaks the world into countless scattered pieces, or enlarges or shrinks it, thus sorting out the "world" in people's eyes.

However, photos are tampering with the world. It forces us to become more and more numb in scale, morality and aesthetics. In a sense, those photographic works that try to arouse conscience have caused a sensation, but at the same time they have dispelled the public's tolerance for similar incidents. In other words, moral photography is not more noble than immoral photography. Photographers aim their cameras at ragged passers-by, which is essentially the same as aiming at dignitaries. Those pictures depicting children who are out of school in poor mountainous areas make people subconsciously lower the standard of care again and again, so that when they really see those people, they will be surprised and whisper, "They are not as poor as they think!" " "The emergence of this situation is precisely because the frame of reference that people compare is not their own life in reality, but the images of those" standard "miserable children in video works. They even subconsciously think that this is nothing like Xie Hailong's big eyes, and he is not entitled to sympathy.

Even if photos are the closest artistic expression to reality, they are not enough to replace reality. No matter how sincerely photographers claim the reducibility of their works, their works are inevitably mixed with personal thoughts and subjective colors, and they always impose their own inherent standards on their subjects. Indeed, photos originate from the real world itself, but the so-called world under the photographer's lens needs to conform to their understanding of the "characteristics" of the subject-either poverty, dignity or exploitation. What's more, the texture and light and shadow of the world under the three-inch lens are strictly required by the photographer, thus taking an "idealized" image. And this world made up of lenses, I prefer to call it the world controlled by photographers.

4. Conclusion

The popularity and rise of the video world may be accompanied by the acceleration of the pace of social life. Complicated social relations and the pressure of life make people unwilling to know the facts deeply, but more willing to believe what they see, and more willing to believe the appearance rather than explore its inner essence. Therefore, the image world provides a good platform for "modern people" to understand the "world".

Many people criticize Sontag for exaggerating the importance of images in his book, thinking that there are not so many fictional elements in it, or in other words, these fictional elements are not enough to have a great impact on our understanding of the world and feeling of life. But I think this needs to be paid enough attention. When reality is understood as uncontrollable and unattainable, photos are a way to imprison reality and keep it static. Over time, this seemingly realistic state will be understood as the so-called reality. People have photos instead of experiences, and they can "realize" their wishes by taking photos, but they don't know the distance that this substitute and prototype are directly ignored, which is a distant reality. With the popularization of photography and superficial understanding, the relationship between the image world and the real world is quietly changing from "similarity" to "substitution". This is a terrible result.

Therefore, we must be soberly aware that the authenticity and deception of photography are juxtaposed, and voyeurism and voyeurism are juxtaposed. Don't be overly suspicious or overly dependent. But here, the inspiration left by photography is that the two sides of the coin can be flipped at will, because we are in a strange and complicated era, a strange and complicated country. More than a hundred years ago, Dickens made an accurate prediction of our times at the beginning of his novel A Tale of Two Cities. He said: "This is the best time, this is the worst time; This is the age of reason, this is the age of doubt; This is the age of faith, this is the age of confusion; This is the spring of hope, this is the winter of disappointment; There is everything in front of people, and there is nothing in front; People go to heaven and people go to hell. "