“Reality has come to seem more and more like what we are shown by cameras.”

— Susan Sontag , book On Photography

"The Image-World", p. 161
On Photography (1977)
Context: Reality has come to seem more and more like what we are shown by cameras. It is common now for people to insist upon their experience of a violent event in which they were caught up — a plane crash, a shoot-out, a terrorist bombing — that "it seemed like a movie." This is said, other descriptions seeming insufficient, in order to explain how real it was. While many people in non-industrialized countries still feel apprehensive when being photographed, divining it to be some kind of trespass, an act of disrespect, a sublimated looting of the personality or the culture, people in industrialized countries seek to have their photographs taken — feel that they are images, and are made real by photographs.

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Susan Sontag 168

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

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Susan Sontag 168

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