Perspective

Susan Sontag was an American essaying, novelist, filmmaker, and the author of the monograph. Although she considered herself primarily a novelist, her literary fiction output was rather meager compared to her volume of essays and critical thought. Sontag professed in the text to be highly influenced by photographic images and processes and, as a filmmaker, was professionally interested in the topic. Sontag presents the text from the position of an accomplished author, an expert critic and writer, and as a deeply interested participant in making and consuming photographs. Sontag's monograph On Photography is perhaps her most enduring work. Critically well received upon publication in 1977, the text has received continuous examination. Although Sontag later reversed her position on several seminal arguments in the text, it remains a fundamental body of thought about photography and the photographic arts. The text is weakened by Sontag's tight focus on American photography nearly...