A Quote by Susan Sontag

A photograph is not only an image (as a painting is an image), an interpretation of the real; it is also a trace, something directly stenciled off the real, like a footprint or a death mask.

Susan Sontag

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Also Death Directly Footprint Image Interpretation Like Mask Off Only Painting Photograph Real Something Trace

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Susan Sontag
American - Author
January 16, 1933 - December 28, 2004

Unlike any other visual image, a photograph is not a rendering, an imitation or an interpretation of its subject, but actually a trace of it. No painting or drawing, however naturalist, belongs to its subject in the way that a photograph does.

John Berger

Some people... cling to the idea that the photograph is an inherently real or honest image and as such is always on a different plane from an obviously subjective form of visual communication such as painting.

Tibor Kalman

Every painted image of something is also about the absence of the real thing. All painting is about the presence of absence.

John Berger

I often think about image, and image is something that - but in truth, the real artistic process, as I've understood it, is 95 percent intuitive, like seat-of-the-pants, at-the-moment decisions that you can't even explain, you know?

George Saunders

The image my work invokes is the image of good - not evil; the image of order - not chaos; the image of life - not death. And that is all the content of my constructions amounts to.

Naum Gabo

The image cannot be dispossessed of a primordial freshness, which idea can never claim. An idea is derivative and tamed. The imageis in the natural or wild state, and it has to be discovered there, not put there, obeying its own law and none of ours. We think we can lay hold of image and take it captive, but the docile captive is not the real image but only the idea, which is the image with its character beaten out of it.

John Crowe Ransom

... photography is an imprint or transfer off the real; it is a photochemically processed trace causally connected to the thing in the world to which it refers in a manner parallel to fingerprints or footprints or the rings of water that cold glasses leave on tables. The photograph is thus generically distinct from painting or sculpture or drawing. On the family tree of images it is closer to palm prints, death masks, the Shroud of Turin, or the tracks of gulls on beaches.

Rosalind E. Krauss

Let's be honest. You let yourself be pulled in because it felt good to be wanted, needed. But then it went too far, as projected images always do. If it's not a real image, but one that has been projected on to you, then you can keep up the masquerade for only so long before the mask cracks and the paint on the mask peels away.

Tori Amos

You have to record as many details as possible and achieve an order, without taking away the complexity of the real. To voice the real and at the same time to create an image that is a world in itself, with its own coherence, its autonomy and sovereignty; an image that thinks

Luc Delahaye

I have an image of what a British gentleman looks like, and that image finds real expression in Prince Charles. He is beyond fashion - he is an archetype of style.

Donatella Versace

People have the idea that an image must stand for something else, that the real meaning needs to be described with language. Instead it is the image itself that is the meaning.

Mark Ryden

[When] I am taking a photograph, I am conscious that I am constructing images rather than taking snapshots. Since I do not take rapid photographs it is in this respect like a painting which takes a long time where you are very aware of what you are doing in the process. Exposure is only the final act of making the image as a photograph.

Thomas Struth

The image can only be studied through the image, by dreaming images as they gather in reverie. It is a non-sense to claim to study imagination objectively since one really receives the image only if he admires it. Already in comparing one image to another, one runs the risk of losing participation in its individuality.

Gaston Bachelard

Like an image in a dream the world is troubled by love, hatred, and other poisons. So long as the dream lasts, the image appears to be real; but on awaking it vanishes.

Samuel Johnson

The first real Cassini image that brought tears to my eyes was an image of Jupiter. I didn't expect it to look so detailed.

Carolyn Porco

The fellow who wrote the post about sharing a bear suit with a girl at a party saw my illustration and emailed me, which was kind of thrilling. He sent a photo taken on the night, and that was a dream-like experience... but even though I've seen the "real" bear suit, my image of it feels real to me, and his photo the interpretation.

Sophie Blackall

A Quote by Susan Sontag

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