On Photography

An American philosopher, cultural critic, and political activist, Susan Sontag (1933-2004) held a BA from the university of Chicago and an MA in philosophy from Harvard. She wrote extensively on photographic media and its influence on culture, illness, and leftism. Sontag was a bisexual woman who kept her sexual orientation private during her life; her experience in the LGBTQ+ community and survival of the AIDS crisis led to a reorientation of her work. She wrote Illness as Metaphor (1978) and AIDS and Its Metaphors (1988) after experiencing the crisis. Sontag’s meditations on illness and the pain of others led to her writing Regarding the Pain of Others (2003) which alters some of her positions in On Photography that assume people can understand the experiences of others through simply witnessing the experiences.

As an interdisciplinary critic and activist with an educational background in philosophy, Sontag was uniquely suited to explore the ramifications of the camera’s gaze in society. Her familiarity with foundational photography history and criticism allowed her to continue conversations on photography that Walter Benjamin and Charles Baudelaire started. Sontag spent the late 1950s in Paris on a fellowship, and her contact with Parisian intellectuals and culture profoundly impacted her.