Due Oct 21

Susan Sontag: "In Plato's Cave"

On Photography is a collection of essays written by Susan Sontag in the 1970s and originally published in the New York Review of Books. Sontag is a provocative writer, engaging our attention with startling and often counterintuitive claims about the function of photographic imagery in our society. She writes as a public intellectual rather than as an academic—you’ll note the absence of footnotes or other source citation. Some of her analysis may seem outdated in the digital era, but other points will strike you as truer now than ever before.

For class please read and take three-column notes on “In Plato’s Cave,” the first of the essays collected in On Photography. As we did when you watched The Persuaders for Unit Two, start by writing down quotations in the left-hand column. Then rewrite those quotes in your own words in the middle column, focusing on expressing the author’s ideas in ways amenable to you. Finally, use the right-hand column to record your reaction to her idea—in particular, any plans for applying Sontag to the photographs selected for this unit. As with The Persuaders, don’t be too eager to fill up that right-hand column—leave space for later thoughts and blanks where she has a cool idea but you're not sure what to do with it.

Our goal in reading Sontag is to gain a vocabulary for talking about photography’s power to inspire an emotional reaction in viewers—as well as its limitations. So be sure to take note of her vital, provocative claims: not just places where you agree with her, but also places where you disagree. Later on, you may want to return to those points of controversy and consider making that issue a focal point for your essay.

To post below Go through the images on the front page of the CourseDocs site and make a tentative choice of a photograph to focus on for this unit. Take 10 minutes to familiarize yourself with the photo.

Make a list of 20 key details (a start on creating two-column notes). Then pick out the two most important facts about the image and use them to craft a 1 or 2 sentence summary of the image's rhetorical message. Your sentence should express how the photo's message arises from the relationship between those two really important details.

For example, looking at the image from the last lecture, I might write, "The mother's worried expression as her children huddle around forces viewers to sympathize with the plight of migrant farmworkers during the Great Depression" (key details set in boldface type). You'll note that this isn't a thesis claim so much as a preliminary understanding.

Paste your sentence into the comment box below.