On Photography

Satisfied

I bought this for my mother and it absolutely did not disappoint. For an english literature major who is now figuring out the joys of digital photography from her phone, this book was the first she picked up from the birthday pile. With the empowering tools everyone has in this age to become photographers, this book changes the way you think and how photographs have such a deeper subconscious impact in the way we see ourselves and the world.

Must read if you are a true photography enthusiast and not just a content creator. Someone who wants to deep dive into what photography actually is. Might change your perspective.

A brilliant writing by Susan on varied aspects of the art and science of photography. She delves into the significance of photography in modern world discussing great photographers worldwide. A must read book for people wanting to know intellectual and social angles of photography.

A classic read for those who wish to understand photography beyond camera and technology.

As "The Times" said, this books offers food for thought to satisfy the appetite.

The book looks like a pirate copy, paper quality, printing, font size is bad. I really like Susan's articulation.

Susan Sontag's groundbreaking critique of photography asks forceful questions about the moral and aesthetic issues surrounding this art form. Photographs are everywhere, and the 'insatiability of the photographing eye' has profoundly altered our relationship with the world

The book seemed like its in a bad condition like its a used book.

On Photography is less a book about photography itself than a study of perception, distance, power, and modern consciousness. Sontag examines the camera not merely as a tool for documentation, but as something that fundamentally alters the way people experience reality, memory, suffering, beauty, and even one another. What stands out most is the density of the thought. Nearly every essay contains ideas that continue unfolding long after reading: photography as acquisition, as aestheticization, as emotional buffering, as evidence, as consumption. Even decades after publication, many of her observations feel uncannily contemporary in an image-saturated culture. Sontag also writes with extraordinary intellectual compression. The prose is elegant and sharp without becoming ornamental, capable of moving from cultural criticism to philosophy to psychological observation within a few sentences. The writing demands attention, but rewards it repeatedly. What gives the book lasting force is its refusal to treat images as neutral. Again and again, Sontag interrogates what it means to look at suffering, to collect moments, to transform experience into representation. The questions become ethical as much as aesthetic. At times the arguments feel deliberately severe, even skeptical of photography’s emotional claims, but that tension is part of what keeps the work alive. The book resists easy resolution and instead sharpens awareness itself. It remains one of the most intellectually influential works ever written about images—not because it explains photography technically, but because it reveals how deeply photography shapes modern ways of seeing.

Each page of the book impelled me to go out there and take millions of pictures, but it also made me question the role of photographers and the ethics of the profession. Breathtaking insights. I'd really want to know what Susan Sontag would have to say about the "selfie generation".

Susan Santag ci ha mostrato vari casi che usiamo le foto. Questo libro mi ha aiutato molto per la mia tesi sulla fotografia. Tutti pensiamo di saper fare le foto, ma bisogna pensare bene prima di fare quel "clic".

...have yet to read it though. Got it based on some ytuber who praised it, will see......