Susan Sontag’s
On Photography(1977) began as a series of articles—most of them reviews of books of or about photography–that appeared in the
New York Review of Booksbetween 1973 and 1977. Though Sontag is obviously well acquainted with canonical figures in the history of the medium (Daguerre, Talbot, Cameron; Stieglitz, Weston, Lange; Abbot, Avedon, Penn), her immediate prompt was an exhibition of Diane Arbus photographs at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in 1972. Not far in the background, however, is the national trauma of America’s military involvement in Vietnam, of which Sontag was a passionate critic (see Nelson 106-09, Menand 689-90). Her experience in the anti-war movement may well account for the extent of her political skepticism in
On Photography.It may account as…
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Citation: Poague, Leland. "On Photography". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 23 September 2021 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=3061, accessed 11 May 2024.]
