"America, Seen Through Photographs, Darkly" -Susan Sontag

For class, we had to read an essay called "America, Seen Through Photographs, Darkly" from Susan Sontag's book On Photography. The essay focuses on the effects of photographs on the perceived importance of their subjects. Sontag argues that photography has gradually evolved from depicting idealized images to idealizing depicted images. In other words, photography has gradually equalized all of the things it depicts so that beauty can be found in any image. Sontag cites Walt Whitman's work as evidence of an emerging trend in democratizing all aspects of art. Whitmanesque thinking applied towards photography contends that photographs that are not of inherently beautiful subjects are more meaningful, because the beauty in them must be searched for.
Immediately after presenting this argument, however, Sontag brings up the work of Diane Arbus, whose work Sontag describes as "anti-humanist." Sontag explains that Arbus' intent was to ignore beauty altogether and depict the strangeness that she saw as inherent in the world, an ideology in conflict with Whitman's humanist opinion of beauty being in everything. Sontag argues that Arbus' views do not necessarily clash with Whitman's, however, because they both "rule out a historical understanding of reality" by depicting things that are different from what is typically perceived of as "normal."
Sontag then goes into great detail about Arbus' work and method of photography. At one point, Sontag describes Arbus' ideology as viewing the photographer as a kind of "supertourist," only briefly visiting the world of the weird and not attempting to give it any context within the rest of society. Arbus seems to have focused more on the experience of the photographer than on the actual subject of the photograph. The photographs of "freaks," as Arbus called them, were meant to convey the experience of the photograph being taken and then get the audience to empathize with the photographer's foray into the sub-cultural world the photographs were taken in. This kind of "photographer as character" was meant to shock audiences and react against the perception of cultural normality.
If all of that sounds complicated, it is. Sontag's assessment of Arbus' work is comprehensive in scope. It is clear that Sontag knows Arbus' work well. It was definitely an interesting read, because it profiled a photographer who basically challenged the purpose of art. Arbus was reacting against the status quo in all senses: politically, culturally, artistically. I wouldn't say I agreed with all of Arbus' ideas. The presentation of the artist as the central point of an artistic work is fascinating but only works to certain degrees. Sontag noted that once people see things they aren't used to enough, they become desensitized. Similarly, people eventually become desensitized to the artist's process and accept any irregularities as relatively normal. Nonetheless, it was a thoroughly interesting essay that presented challenging ideas not just about photography, but on the nature and purpose of art as a whole.