“The particular qualities and intentions of photographs tend to be swallowed up in the generalized pathos of time past.”

"In Plato's Cave", p. 21
On Photography (1977)

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Do you have more details about the quote "The particular qualities and intentions of photographs tend to be swallowed up in the generalized pathos of time past." by Susan Sontag?

Susan Sontag168

American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist 1933–2004

Diane Arbus (1923–1971) American photographer and author

“Each generation is a filter, a sieve; good genes tend to fall through the sieve into the next generation; bad genes tend to end up in bodies that die young or without reproducing.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

River out of Eden (1995)

“Art is simultaneously particular and general. This is a real dichotomy. The great thing about proportion, one aspect of art, is that it is both extremes at once. The level of quality of a work can usually be established by the extent of the polarity between its generality and particularity. Or, to state the idea a little too simply, the better the work, the more diverse its aspects. The nature of the general aspects and the particular ones changes from artist to artist and especially from time to time, since the changes are due to broad changes in philosophy. This change is the essential change in art, determining its purpose and appearance”

Donald Judd (1928–1994) artist

Source: 1980, "Art and Architecture," 1987, p. 177

“Political theorists tend to swallow their theories when forced back on pragmatic measures of survival.”

Robert Silverberg (1935) American speculative fiction writer and editor

Section 5
Short fiction, Hawksbill Station (1967)

“Quality tends to fan out like waves.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 29
Context: Quality tends to fan out like waves. The Quality job he didn't think anyone was going to see is seen, and the person who sees it feels a little better because of it, and is likely to pass that feeling on to others, and in that way the Quality tends to keep on going.

“A photographer's best work is, alas, generally done for himself.”

John Szarkowski (1925–2007) American curator

Looking at Photographs: 100 Pictures from the Collection of The Museum of Modern Art (1999)