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

— Susan Sontag , book On Photography

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

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Susan Sontag 168

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)

“The fool generalizes the particular; the nerd particularizes the general; … the wise does neither.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 53

“'A'isha, Umm al-Mu'minin, Umm 'Abdullah said, "The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, 'An army will invade the Ka'ba. When they are at Bayda', the earth will swallow them up from the first to the last of them.'" She said, "I said, 'Messenger of Allah, how will it swallow them up from the first to the last of them when their traders are among them as well as others who are not really part of them?' He said, 'It will swallow them up from the first to the last of them and then they will resurrected according to their intentions.'"”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 1, hadith number 2
Sunni Hadith

“As time goes by, as time goes by, the whip-crack of the years, the precipice of illusions, the ravine that swallows up all human endeavour except the struggle to survive.”

Roberto Bolaño book By Night in Chile

Source: By Night in Chile

“[I am] dealing not with the particular anecdote, but rather with the Spirit of Myth, which is generic to all myths at all times.”

Mark Rothko (1903–1970) American painter

Abstract Expressionism, David Anfam, Thames and Hudson Ltd London, 1990, p. 81
after 1970, posthumous

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

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Susan Sontag 168

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