On Photography | 
#NewYearNewBooks Day 4: This seems like a #HighwayCvr #HighwayCover of sorts. Recent book haul from Big Bad Wolf in Sharjah a week ago. Book hunting expedition post is forthcoming.
“Any photograph has multiple meanings; indeed, to see something in the form of a photograph is to encounter a potential object of fascination. The ultimate wisdom of the photographic image is to say:“There is the surface. Now think—or rather feel, intuit—what is beyond it, what the reality must be like if it looks this way.” Photographs, which cannot themselves explain anything, are inexhaustible invitations to deduction, speculation, and fantasy“
I wonder about this. I guess I can‘t think of an example of a photograph (not including, perhaps, photograms and some other camera-less photographic arts) that truly transcends indexicality. But to say that it‘s impossible rubs me the wrong way.
It‘s fascinating to me how despite never having read this book, I‘m already familiar with a lot of the concepts she‘s proposing in the first few pages—the ontological difference between subject and image, the interpretation of photography. And this was written over 40 years ago. No wonder it‘s considered such a foundational text.
God... Susan Sontag you were just too awesome. The sentence is painfully beautiful.
When I looked at those photographs, something broke. Some limits had been reached, and not only that of horror; I felt irrevocably grieved, wounded, but a part of my feelings started to tighten; something went dead; something is still crying.
Just finished Camera Lucida, now starting On Photography by Susan Sontag! ❤️❤️❤️
