Susan Sontag Response

During the Susan Sontag reading I could not help but fixate on her notion that photography “is also a powerful instrument for depersonalizing our relation to the world,” making the use of the image the very thing that separates us from what it is representing or trying to present to its audience. I kept rethinking the example of people in a museum taking photographs of art rather than experiencing the work as it is a physical object they are in the presence of. Using this image to create their experience of how hard it was to find a spot with a clear view of the work or how hard it was to fit the entire thing in frame as their relation with the work. Not only that but it causes their relationship with the object to seemingly last longer, basking in the presence of a small iPhone photo rather than a 6 foot painting creating a different intention of living or seeing than the artist probably intended with their work. I can’t escape this sensation of using image to depersonalize either especially with the idea of portraiture. The ideas create an avenue for the artist to put intention onto a subject rather than letting the person speak for themselves which in an art context is seen as a vision rather than using a subject as object.