My rating: 5 of 5 stars
In 2024, a small mistake meant I lost 6000 photos forever.
I’d packed everything for my upcoming trip, I had time to spare before my flight and for some reason, I thought it was a good time to update my iPhone to make sure I was as fresh and optimised I could be for my travels.
I deleted my backups just moments before to make space for the upgrade I imagined was safe and stable.
Long story short, the update went irreversibly awry.
Everything was gone.
I had no choice but to start fresh, losing everything permanently.
After (thoroughly) kicking myself, I began to reason through my situation in an attempt to feel better about my beginner mistake. I took all of those photos in an attempt to remember the world around me at the time. And yet, now that I had lost them all, why was I struggling with the feeling that all the memories themselves were lost?
It didn’t take long for me to realise I was creating my mental image of the past through photos. Instead of my pictures aiding my memory, they were guiding it. The past didn’t lose importance because the photos were gone. It still happed, the fabric of history was not lost, and the people who I shared those moments with still remembered them. Each moment existed, safe from permanent erasure. Everything was still recorded with God.
I reckoned with this feeling for a short while after. Perhaps it was a way to help me deal with my mistake and the loss of those photos, but the more I thought about it, the more it seemed true.
After reading On Photography, I now feel as though I have little option except to look at pictures and photography in general in a different light. I myself am a Photographer. I have taken pictures since smartphones first started adding cameras and have posted countless of my photos from around the world on my website.
And yet, there are many fundamental truths I have read in this book that I simply cannot shake. Photography is not the innocent capturing of a still image. It is not context free and its existence not leave the world the same way as it was before it. And as much as I want to feel otherwise, I no longer believe it to be an entirely harmless endeavour.
One allegory that pops up in various places in this book is that of Plato’s Cave. The core idea is that reality is the (only) truth we should all be trying to live in. Anything that takes us any degree of separation away from it can only harm us in the long run. It sounds simple and above all, it sounds like an idea everyone agrees with. I don’t imagine anyone arguing the opposite. And yet we live in a world where people are increasingly oblivious to the fact that numerous tools and technologies have taken us multiple degrees away from the reality we so readily, theoretically embrace.
Photography, in this case, being one of them.
Photography has existed well before I came into this world, but it’s ubiquitousness has exploded during my lifetime to the extent that almost every person has 24/7 access to a camera that exceeds what even their Parents ever owned. If it really does take us one step further from reality, we would see symptoms of this delusion in our society today. Looking around and taking the pulse of general trends, I don’t think its unreasonable to say that this claim is accurate.
The interesting ideas in this book were abundant and as a photographer I was able to intimately relate to all of them, even if they compounded evidence against me – as most of it did. I have chosen some of the main ideas to discuss as part of this review which don’t necessarily represent all the core ideas of the book, but which I believe give a good representation of the ideas the book has to offer.
Sontag talks about the notion that photos turn the past into a commodity. This notion was an interesting one, and the resulting effects it can have on us as a whole gave me pause for thought. I don’t think people ever have negative intentions when taking a picture for ’memories’, but sometimes things can happen as second or third order effects even if we don‘t intend it. Taking a photo so as to remember the moment later starts the process of outsourcing the memory from your mind to the image. The source of authoritative truth is transferred from the person to the picture. It is now the object that holds the image rather than the person. Photos can then be consumed when we wish to ‘remember’ a moment, and we then shape our remaining memory of the moment around the images we chose to take and preserve. It is in this choosing of what to take a picture of and the choosing of which photos to keep that we effectively shape our memory retroactively. The technology that offers to ‘help’ us remember becomes a tool for the reshaping and influencing of our memories. This was precisely how I felt about the pictures I lost.
At a more fundamental level, we can often delude ourselves into thinking that we are preserving something by taking a picture of it. Think of the National Geographic photographer who travels the world photographing endangered humans, cultures, traditions and animals alike, seeking to save something of them before their sad, seemingly inevitable demise. What may remain 100 years later are only the photos he took. But does that mean that he has done his work in preserving those peoples, cultures and animals? As a result of his diligence, they now only exist in photographs, confined within the borders of the paper they are printed on or the screen upon which they are viewed. In reality they no longer exist. It is only by actions, teaching and learning that the past is truly preserved. Preservation does not mean viewing a long gone people on the screen of our phones, preservation means those same people, those same traditions and those same cultures still existing in the present day. Photography can delude us to believe that the mere action of taking a picture does more than the reality.
In case I haven’t mentioned it enough in this review, I too am a Photographer, so reading this book gave me existential thoughts about the craft and my works up until this point. I value truth and reality. I value them because I don’t like to be lied to. I would go further and say that most human beings are like this. We want what we see, hear, eat and believe to be true, no matter how they are packaged. Our innate revulsion towards inauthenticity at any level is evidence of this. And yet, so much of photography is about securing a specific angle that tricks and bewilders the vision, then editing the photo to change the colours, remove ‘blemishes’, and clone/patch/heal/inpaint any undesirable artifacts away. Is such a process therefore the enemy of truth? Is such a process the embellishment of a lie? Have I been contributing to telling lies about the world to all who have seen my photography?
That’s not to say that all my photos have been edited in such a way, but where do we draw the line? Does simply removing a lamppost or a distant tourist from a picture render the entire endeavour a lie? Am I engaged in a war against truth just by adding a filter onto a photo? What am I intending by sharing a photo that has had its colours manipulated?
These are tough questions that had me thinking for a while as I read this book. Although I am still working through them, it becomes harder for me to see it in any other way except that I am tearing down the value of reality brick by brick. Perhaps there is a middle ground I will eventually find solace in, but for now the hard facts weigh heavily on my mind.
At points, the book itself can be tedious. There are many references to specific photographers, painters and other forms of media from a long time ago. While I am aware of their importance as part of this work, it can make the book seem more like a literature review at times. It is also difficult to grasp the full point the author is making without visual representations of the works she is referring to. But unless you have a copy of the book with images (something that might betray a very strong sense of irony), it is often hard to imagine what is being referred to.
Another interesting idea was the connection between images in all forms and the concept of religious idolatry. Due to the modern ubiquotous nature of photography, we tend to downplay any such connection. We may tend to wonder how it is possible for a relatively inexpensive device in our pocket can make any claim to idolatry. And yet, as Sontag so masterfully explains, we are hesitant to permanently delete or discard any pictures of loved ones on a whim, so there is something more to photography than the mere representation of a thing onto paper. We attach ourselves to the image with more devotion than we are comfortable to admit. For me, such an example is sufficient to help with understanding the prohibition of image making in various religions and cultures.
Some may make comparisons between photography and other forms of expression such as painting or writing. On the surface, such comparisons seem valid and fitting. Sontag however explains taking writing as an example. The writer seeks only to share his feelings, be they grief, joy or sorrow. The photographer on the other hand seeks the feelings of others to capture and share. It is, according to Sontag, a fundamentally voyeuristic venture focused on the ‘revealing’ and ‘bringing to light’ of the world. It is an endeavour focused on the external rather than any surfacing of the internal. It follows then, that photography is – by its very nature- the search for the odd and subversive, that which defies and contradicts expected reality. This being the case, it cannot by default be taken as an ‘enterprise of truth’. The photographer is not necessarily seeking to represent reality in its truest form, he is seeking to twist and manipulate it in order to shock and surprise others. This act of photographic ‘seeing’ already blinds us from viewing the world in a truthful way. The photographer becomes blind the second he looks at reality in order to find the ‘perfect shot’ with the ‘optimal framing’ he so very craves.
In addition, in one form or another, the photographer seeks to beautify his subject. He seeks to enforce the idea that anything if captured ‘correctly’ can be beautiful and that nothing is truly ugly. While such an intention seems noble, it erases fundamental boundaries and delineations that are so very important to our experience of life.
All of these factors lead to the photographer’s general disrespect and his contribution towards the lifelong erosion of truth and reality from the minds of men. I found myself unable to fundamentally disagree with many of these points, even if I am not quite a ‘full’ believer in the points myself. It didn’t take long for me to look at my own experiences taking photos for me to see myself in almost all the examples given. From the beginning I used to try and look at a ‘normal’ scene in an abnormal way, to try and ‘see’ in something beyond what was normally there, to make the beautiful out of the ordinary and unassuming.
Even if I try to be charitable to myself and let my good intentions override my deeds, there is yet another hurdle to overcome, one that Sontag did not mention much of in her book (likely due to the lack of such technologies available at the time) and one to which I alluded earlier – that of photo editing. At the press of a button and swipes of a mouse, photos can have their entire compositions changed, objects removed and colour palettes swapped beyond original recognition. Were I to have mercy upon and excuse myself for taking pictures, could I extend the same generosity to editing my photos? An honest accounting of my self answers with a resounding no. I have been guilty of editing colours and removing items from photos in the past, and while they seemed like innocent amendments at the time, to align the image with the intended feeling, I realise now that it was nothing but a direct assault on truth. I was unknowingly attacking reality, disfiguring and maligning it, disrespecting and belittling it. I had thought that the image in my head would be better than that which actually existed, but reality always prevails over any imaginary scene by mere virtue of its factual existence. Truth always triumphs over falsehood.
Taking a step back away from the act of taking a photo in of itself, the mere existence of photography weaves a new dynamic of existence between the technology and the world it exists in. We may be tempted to think that viewing a picture is representative of us being ‘there’ in the moment that the photo shows. We may in this regard understand ourselves to be an observer a mere degree away from the event itself. The truth however is that we are in fact two degrees away from the actual event. The actual, real occurrence of the even if the original source. Anyone there at the scene as the event happened, viewing it with his own eyes represents the first degree of separation. Should this person take a photo of the event, then all the viewers of this photo are in fact participating as second degree observers. We are twice removed from the event. Firstly because we were not there, and secondly because we are viewing a representation of what someone decided to capture of what actually happened. We are prisoners of the photo, and by viewing it we submit to the photographers framing, perspective and implied emphasis. A picture is worth a thousand words, and by seeing one we become avid readers of whatever the photographer has written.
This by itself doesn’t seem to necessarily be a problem if we assume that the photographer seeks and intends to tell the truth. But one needs to merely take a look at the countless marketing agencies, social media influencers, media organisations and advertisers to understand that there is organised, industrial-strength capacity machinery that exists solely to fool your eyes into thinking something is other than what it really is. Perhaps someone at the time of Sontag may have laughed away her concerns as foolishness, but time has proven her warnings to be nothing but prudent. It is not necessarily at the relative beginning of something that the warnings are made, but they are warned of at the start as a precursor for the inevitable danger that awaits the blind follower.
Since we have mentioned the advertising industry, the final interesting idea from the book that I will mention as part of this review is the abstract nature of photography. Sontag writes that photography allows for real ‘things’ in the world to be stripped of their essence and abstracted for use in any capacity. Take the example of a mountain, it exists in reality as a formidable reminder of man’s helplessness in front of the God. It serves as a sublime reminder of his own smallness and inspires humility in him. Taking a picture of the same mountain however, allows one to use it in an advertisement for chocolate or coffee. Instead of the mountain representing its essence, it has been abstracted away as an ‘idea’ of ‘feeling’ to be used to sell an item. Once more, reality has been assaulted and we have descended the ladder of simulacra as Jean Baudrillard so poignantly warned us of.
I finished ‘On Photography’ with a heavy heart, feeling sad because I had never given my hobby of photography much thought in this regard before, but also because I felt a tinge of guilt that I had been guilty of the very assault on reality I am so eager to despise and warn against. At the time of this review, it has been a few months since I finished the book, but I wrestle with the ideas on a regular basis. I am still coming to terms with some of the irrefutable ideas presented therein and understanding my own works through their lens.
If you are a photographer yourself but are also acutely aware of the negotiation we are endlessly engaged in with regards to technology and its impact on society, I highly recommend this book. No longer can I look at photography with the same innocent joy as I once did, but I also know that whatever my mind settles on is ultimately going to be best for the comfort of my heart. I still take photos from time to time, but the insight and perspective that Sontag has provided me with in ‘On Photography’ is one that I hope will inform my views and actions as long as I live.
I highly recommend this book.