Status Updates From Susan Sontag on Photography

"A capitalist society requires a culture based on images. It needs to furnish
vast amounts of entertainment in order to stimulate buying and anesthetize
the injuries of class, race, and sex. The camera’s twin
capacities, to subjectivize reality and to objectify it, ideally serve these
needs and strengthen them."

"Because each photograph is only a fragment, its moral and emotional
weight depends on where it is inserted. "

"Many people are anxious when they’re about to be photographed: not
because they fear, as primitives do, being violated but because they fear the
camera’s disapproval. People want the idealized image: a photograph of
themselves looking their best. They feel rebuked when the camera doesn’t
return an image of themselves as more attractive than they really are. "