Susan Sontag

The shock of photographed atrocities wears off with repeated viewings, just as the surprise and bemusement felt the first time one sees a pornographic movie wear off after one sees a few more. ↗

— Susan Sontag

#photography #pornography #movies

With genius, as with beauty -- all, well almost all, is forgiven. ↗

— Susan Sontag

#exemptions #forgiveness #generosity #genius #leniency

Photographs shock insofar as they show something novel. ↗

— Susan Sontag

#news #novelty #photography #shock #art

That's the source of the meditation on death I've carried in my heart all my life. ↗

— Susan Sontag

#death

AIDS occupies such a large part in our awareness because of what it has been taken to represent. It seems the very model of all the catastrophes privileged populations feel await them. ↗

— Susan Sontag

#await #awareness #because #been #catastrophes

AIDS obliges people to think of sex as having, possibly, the direst consequences: suicide. Or murder. ↗

— Susan Sontag

#consequences #having #murder #obliges #people

Depression is melancholy minus its charms - the animation, the fits. ↗

— Susan Sontag

#charms #depression #fits #melancholy #minus

A fiction about soft or easy deaths is part of the mythology of most diseases that are not considered shameful or demeaning. ↗

— Susan Sontag

#considered #deaths #demeaning #diseases #easy

Victims suggest innocence. And innocence, by the inexorable logic that governs all relational terms, suggests guilt. ↗

— Susan Sontag

#guilt #inexorable #innocence #logic #suggest

As photographs give people an imaginary possession of a past that is unreal, they also help people to take possession of space in which they are insecure. ↗

— Susan Sontag

#give #help #help people #imaginary #insecure