6757228 America Seen Through Photographs Darkly

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America, Seen Through

Photographs, DarklySusan Sontag

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Anything as a Subject

Matter• In Walt Whitman’s In Leaves of Grass he

argues that all things whether beautiful or

ugly, important or trivial, were of equal

value and opportunity to be an artistic

subject matter

• Whitman claimed that art would be

demystified by reality

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Early Photographers

• Sought to take beautiful photographs of 

beautiful subject matter

• From the 1900’s on, photographers

increasingly photographed the ordinary

• Sontag argues that this endorses Whitman’sclaim

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Walker Evans

•Sontag names Walker Evans as the last

great photographer to affirm Whitman’s

humanism

•His subject matter aimed to be “literate,

authoritative, transcendent”

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Miner’s Homes

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Allie Burroughs

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Floyd Burroughs

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Burrough’s Kitchen

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Auto Parts Store

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Roadside Stand

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Steel Mill & Company Houses

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Fireplace at Burroughs House

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Inclusive Intentions

• Whitman and Evans wanted Americans to

identify with one another

• Leading the viewer to identify in things

that are different

• Sontag feels this is an alien concept toAmericans now

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Diane Arbus as the

Insider / Outsider• Sontag uses Diane Arbus’ photography as

an example of the opposite: images of outsiders that do not encourage the viewer

to identify with them

• Arbus’ work is frank and forces intimacybetween the viewer and the subject

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Diane Arbus as the

Insider / Outsider

•Sontag sees Arbus’ style as an aggression on

the public done to prove both the viewerand photographer’s hardness

• Depends on the separation between the

viewer and subject’s world

• No compassionate motive

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Diane Arbus as the

Insider / Outsider

•Arbus awkwardly posed her subjects, often

adding a sense of flaw where there wasnone

• Her subjects posed willingly because Arbus

had become their friend

• She was an insider depicting outsiders

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Untitled

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Tattooed Man at

Carnival

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Naked Man Being a

Woman

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Identical Twins

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Young Family on a

Sunday Outing

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Mexican Dwarf in

his Hotel Room

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Masked Woman in

Wheel Chair

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Outsider

• Photographer does not have access to the

person / subject directly, or on a personal

level

• Photographer is an observer, not a

participant

• The photographer interprets the subject

from an outsider’s point of view