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A Study Guide to Susan Sontag’s On Photography
by Robert R. Hall, ACKphoto, Nantucket MA, 2007
Chapter 1. In Plato’s CaveSection 1-1, p.3.Person Mentioned Reference Vocabulary PagePlato’s Cave (What is it?) Unregenerality 3
Insatiability 3
Section 1-2, p.5Person Mentioned Reference Vocabulary PageWalker Evans Goddard’s Les Carabiniers (1963) Pretension 6Dorathea Lange Chris Marker (1966), Si j’avais Quatre Dromadaries (1966) Didacticism 7Ben Shahn Ubiquity 7Russell Lee Gratuitous 8David Octavius HillJulia Margaret Cameron
Chapter 2. American Seen Through Photographs DarklySection 2-1, p.27Person Mentioned Reference Vocabulary PageWalt Whitman Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (1955) (The Great Cultural
Revolution)
Section 2-2, p.28Person Mentioned Reference Vocabulary PageEdward Steichen Stieglitz magazine, Camera Work (1903-17) Lyrical 28Andy Warhol Tawdry 28Lewis Hine Paul Rosenfeld’s Essays in Port of New York (1924) Vapid 28
(referred to more than once, important) Evangel 29Polemical (important) 29Parody 29Edify 29Trancendental 31Empathy 31Concord 31Discord 31Afflatus 31
Baudelaire Brassai’s Paris de Nuit (1933) Unconscious (Freudian) 64Paul Martin (1890s) Weegee Naked City (1945) Freud 54Arnold Genthe Jacob Riis How the Other Half Lives (1890) Pathos 54
Bruce Davidson East 100th St (1970) Bourgeois 54Sir Benjamin Stone (National Photographic Record Assn. (1897) Disaffection 54Count Giuseppe Primoli John Thompson Street Life in London (1877-8) Confluence 55Jacques-Henri Lartigue John Thompson Illustrations of China & its People (1873-4) Courtiers 55
Section 3-3, p.59Person Mentioned Reference Vocabulary PageAugust Sander (1911) Sander’s Antlitz der Zeit (The faces of our time) (1934) Weimar Germany 59George Grosz Enthralled 60Lisette Model Walker Evans American Photographs (1938) Preeminently 60Eadweard Muybridge Robert Frank The American (1959) Condescension 60Roy Emerson Stryker (Farm Security Administration, 1935) (a pupil of Hine) Nihilistic 61Adam Clark Vroman (took pictures of Indians, 1895-1904) Unabashed 62
Thompson (travel reports, p.63) Partisan 63Hart Crane (1923, writes on Stieglitz) Cognate 64Henry James James’ The American Scene (1907) Token 64Jack Kerouac Consecrate 65Clarence John Laughlin (1930s) Fantasia 68Bernice Abbott Abbott’s Changing New York (1939) Patina 68
Flaubert * Apotheosize 90Fox Talbot’s The Pencil of Nature (1844-46) Grandiose 91
Kandinsky Colossus of Abu Simbel Abstracting (act of) 91Brancusi Temel of Baalbek Didactic 93Thoreau Stieglitz photo: Fith Avenue in Winter (1893) Animate 93
Paul Strand’s photo Abstracts made by Bowls (1915) Febrile 94Moholy-Nagy’s book von material zur architecture (1928) Published by Bauhaus. English version “The New Vision”Weston photo: Cabbage Leaf (1931)
Harold Edgerton Edgerton’s photo Splash of Milk (1936)Albert Renger-
PatzschPatzsch’s Die welt ist schon (The World is Beautiful) (1928)
Turner (artist)Francis Bacon
DuChampApolinaire * (*also TS Eliot, Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams)
Carmel, California Aegis 99Aaron Siskind Solicitous 99Ansel Adams Cliché 99Andreas Feininger Feininger’s Anatomy of Nature (1965) Unctuous 101
Weston’s photo Torso of Neil (1925) Pernicious 101Strand’s photos Blind Woman, and Man Demotic 101
Helmar Lerski Lerski’s Kopfe des Alltags (Everyday Faces) (1931) Anecdote 102Avedon’s photos of his dying father (1972) Inane 102
W. Eugene Smith Smith’s Minamata (1960s) (from Japan) Pathos 102Cordelias 105
John Berger Photo of Che Guevara’s body, Bolivia, October 1967 Paroxysm 105Artaud Mantegna’s The Dead Christ Convulsive 105Wittgenstein Rembrant’s The Anomy Lesson of Professor Tula Pieta 105
Marxism Dramaturgy 105Godard & Gorin’s film A Letter to Jane (1972) Moralists 107French picture magazine L’Expres” Modishness 107
Proust J.G. Ballard’s Crash (1973)Hofrat Behrens Behrens’ The Magic Mountain
Melville’s PierreNabokov’s Invitation to a Beheading (1938)
Section 6-3 through 6-5, p.167-179Person Mentioned Reference Vocabulary Page
Antonioni’s Film China Narcissic 167
Notes. Items in parentheses in the Reference column refer to the “person mentioned” to the left. Sontag did not give each section a title. Person’s Mentioned include the photographers, as well as artists and writers. Reference items are films and books, and a few other things, referred to in her text. Sontag has a large vocabulary. My selection is arbitrary. I tried to include terms that would be vaguely known by a high school graduate in the USA. Sontag uses terms precisely, so it is worth the effort to look up each term. Please pardon typing errors on this first draft. Corrections and comments accepted (email: bob at ACKphoto.com)