Like the collector, the photographer is animated by a passion that, even when it appears to be for the present, is linked to a sense of the past.
Susan SontagRead
Photographs are a way of imprisoning reality, understood as recalcitrant, inaccessible; of making it stand still. One can't possess reality, one can possess (and be possessed by) images — as, according to Proust, most ambitious of voluntary prisoners, one can't possess the present but one can possessthe past.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects on the nature of photography as a means to capture and hold onto reality, which is otherwise fleeting and elusive.
Susan Sontag's quote explores the paradox of photography: while it allows us to capture moments and memories, it simultaneously indicates that we can never truly hold onto reality itself. Photography serves as a tool for preserving our perceptions of the world, but it highlights the limitations of those images in truly representing the present, as we can only ever refer back to what has already transpired, making us prisoners of our captured past.
Themes
PhotographyRealityImagesPastPerception
In practice
Example use cases
In a presentation on the impact of photography on art appreciation.
More from Susan Sontag
All quotes →Science fiction films are not about science. They are about disaster, which is one of the oldest subjects of art.
Susan SontagRead
Gide and I have attained such perfect intellectual communion that I experience the appropriate labor pains for every thought he gives birth to!
Susan SontagRead
Volume depends precisely on the writer's having been able to sit in a room every day, year after year, alone.
Susan SontagRead
In NY sensuality completely turns into sexuality - no objects for the senses to respond to, no beautiful river, houses, people. Awful smells of the street, and dirt... Nothing except eating, if that, and the frenzy of the bed.
Susan SontagRead
It hurts to love. It's like giving yourself to be flayed and knowing that at any moment the other person may just walk off with your skin.
Susan SontagRead
Similar quotes
The informing idea of what you want to say and do, that's what will take you from film school to professional - the idea. That's what is original to you.
William FriedkinRead
At Pixar, good ideas may be cut from a film, but they are never forgotten.
John LasseterRead
On a bike, being just slightly above pedestrian and car eye level, one gets a perfect view of the goings-on in one's own town.
David ByrneRead
Remember, writing poetry is like making love: one will never know whether one's own pleasure is shared.
Cesare PaveseRead
I don't need to write comics for a living. I have movies and TV for that. I write comics for one reason and one reason only: I love comics. I love the form, the structure, the storytelling process, I love everything about it.
J. Michael StraczynskiRead
Films to the degree that they glorify mindlessness and short attention span they are bad, to the degree that they encourage empathy with people not like ourselves and encourage us to think about life, they are good.
Roger EbertRead