Susan Sontag: On Photography

Softcover | 12.9 x 1.4 x 19.8 cm | 240 pp

Penguin | 2022 | 9780241996515

A writer, director and human rights activist, Susan Sontag (1933–2004) was one of the most influential thinkers of her generation. First published in 1978, her award-winning On Photography explores the proliferation of such images as a means of capturing modern life and discovering beauty, but also queries how taking photographs impacts our experience of the world.

In this essential and revelatory volume, Susan Sontag confronts important questions surrounding the power dynamics between photographer and subject, the blurred boundary between lived events and recreated images, and the desires that lead us to record our lives.

'Complex and contradictory... one of America's greatest public intellectuals' Observer

'Susan Sontag offers enough food for thought to satisfy the most intellectual of appetites' The Times

'The most original and illuminating study of the subject' New Yorker

'A brilliant analysis of the profound changes photographic images have had in our way of looking at the world, and at ourselves, over the years' Washington Post