Photographers' Haul
To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed...Photographed images do not seem to be statements about the world so much as pieces of it.
Susan Sontag (1977)
‘Catching’ the sunset, 'taking' a picture, even 'bagging' a photo, we return from the fair ground of experience, our treasured
goldfish
A consideration of how the word 'object' is used.
secure in its plastic encasement. And we have been bringing the same kinds of trophies back since photography began: photographs which feature our families, our bodies and our travels. As our families grow-up or disperse we cleave to them; we search out bodies we desire and hold them closer; and we bring back tokens of far away places for others to admire and ourselves to regain. So we create microcosms, but these small worlds have been
aestheticized.
A page which approaches aestheticization from another angle.
It is the happy family, the beautiful body, the
splendid sunset
A page with a sunset image from a far away land.
that makes up our haul. However, photographs also act as far
more
On the wonder that photographers find in their work.
than titivated relics.
The quote is taken from her book On Photography p. 4. which was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York. A book on photography consisting entirely of words as Wright Morris rightly notes in his article 'Photographs, Images, and Words' written for The American Scholar 48 (4) Autumn 1979.
Photographer 'catching' a sunset at Kippford in southern Scotland.
Above hovering on blue introduces a link: click to go, move away to stay.
Saturday 9th March 2019
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