THE HUNTER
November 2nd, 2008 adminQuite belatedly, I’m reading Susan Sontag’s book On Photography (Penguin Books, 1971).
Just read this paragraph, which seems somewhat relevant to my last post….
“One situation where people are switching from bullets to film is the photographic safari that is replacing the gun safari in East Africa. The hunters have Hasselblads instead of Winchesters; instead of looking through a telescopic sight to aim a rifle, they look through a viewfinder to frame a picture….The photographer is now charging real beasts, beleaguered and too rare to kill. Guns have metamorphosed into cameras in this earnest comedy, the ecology safari, because nature has ceased to be what it always had been – what people needed protection from. Now nature – tamed, endangered, mortal – needs to be protected from people. When we are afraid, we shoot. But when we are nostalgic, we take pictures.â€
November 3rd, 2008 at 10:15 pm
dear simon
i loved this quote … reminded me of a time i was backpacking in india. we traveled to a national park on the nepalese border and were watching elephants bathe in a river. A truck load of well healed tourists got out of air-conditioned coach and they each assembled complicated photographic equipment – it was certainly a case of ‘my lens is bigger than yours’.
I especially loved sontag’s empathy with nature – tamed, endangered, mortal – it triggered the markist in me … is now not the time to change the world rather than merely record it … http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/10/sensitive-dependence-photography.php
all best
kelly