"The ultimate wisdom of the photographic image is to say: 'There is the surface. Now think--or rather feel, intuit--what is beyond it, what the reality must be like if it looks this way.' Photographs, which cannot themselves explain anything, are inexhaustible invitations to deduction, speculation, and fantasy. Photography implies that we know about the world if we accept it as the camera records it. But this is the opposite of understanding, which starts from not accepting the world as it looks."
Susan Sontag, from On Photography
Photograph by Peter Hujar
(obituary published in "New York," Jan. 10, 2005)
On Photography is definitely on my Must Read List. As I just scored a gift card to a bookstore, I'm inspired to go pick up a copy today or tomorrow.
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