As industrialization provided social uses for the operations of the photographer, so the reaction against these uses reinforced the self-consciousness of photography-as-art.
Susan Sontagart is the most general condition of the Past in the present. ... Perhaps no work of art is art. It can only become art, when it is part of the past. In this normative sense, a 'contemporary' work of art would be a contradiction - except so far as we can, in the present, assimilate the present to the past.
Susan SontagAny critic is entitled to wrong judgments, of course. But certain lapses of judgment indicate the radical failure of an entire sensibility.
Susan SontagWriting is a little door. Some fantasies, like big pieces of furniture, wonโt come through.
Susan SontagCurrently intellectuals in Western Europe and North America are extremely demoralized and shaken by the rise of a virulent conservative tendency (which some have even joined).
Susan SontagEnemies are somewhere else, as the fighting is almost always โover there,โ with Islamic fundamentalism now replacing Russian and Chinese communism as the implacable, furtive menace. And โterroristโ is a more flexible word than โcommunist.โ It can unify a larger number of quite different struggles and interests. What this may mean is that the war will be endless---since there will always be some terrorism.
Susan Sontag