Deconstructing the Gaze: Susan Sontag’s “On Photography” as Contemporary Diagnosis

Deconstructing the Gaze: Susan Sontag’s “On Photography” as Contemporary Diagnosis

A foundational work of cultural criticism that asks “how images change us.”

Susan Sontag’s On Photography, published in 1977, collected her seminal essays from the New York Review of Books written between 1973 and 1977. The book not only won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism upon its release but has long been regarded as a foundational text for understanding modern image-saturated society. At its core, it employs a sharp cultural-critical lens to examine the profound impact of photography on human experience, collective memory, and public ethics.

It must first be clarified that this is not a guide to photographic technique or equipment. It is, rather, a pointed cultural diagnosis. Sontag’s true concern is how the modern acts of “taking” and “viewing” photographs have fundamentally altered our relationship with the world. She also attempts to re-evaluate the persistent tensions between “documentary,” “witness,” and the “scopophilia” (pleasure of looking) inherent in images.

Core Arguments: How Photography Reshapes Reality

Sontag’s argument proceeds along four primary paths:

1. The Image-World: Viewing as a Substitute for Experience

Photography transforms the boundless world into an “image-bank” that can be easily collected, categorized, and exchanged. People increasingly substitute “having seen” (an image) for “having experienced” (an event), leading to a diminished density of experience and the fragmentation of memory. Our very lives—travel, rituals, the everyday—are, in turn, disciplined by the “need” to be photographed. The image is no longer a subsequent record but has become the default interface for engaging with life.

2. Aestheticization and Detachment: The Erosion of Ethical Tension

When faced with images of war, disaster, and poverty, the viewer easily falls into an “aestheticization” trap—appreciating the image for its composition, light, or style. This aesthetic mode of viewing allows the spectator to maintain a “safe distance” from the suffering of others while indulging in visual pleasure or momentary shock, ultimately weakening the will to act. The conclusion is that the formal handling and exhibition context of an image quietly reshape our ethical responses.

3. The Institution of Documentary: The Production of Visibility

So-called “documentary” photography is not as naturally neutral as one might assume. Sontag points out that it is “institutions”—media, museums, archives—that actively “produce” what is visible and how it is to be understood. A photograph’s “evidentiary power” derives more from its placement within an archive and its display process than from its mere technical capacity for representation. In short: Documentary = Record + Construction.

4. The Paradox of Witness and Intervention

In the midst of a crisis or disaster, the photographer is often torn between the ethical dilemma of “shooting” (with the camera) or “helping” (the subject). The spectator, on the other end, also vacillates between “looking” and “acting.” This implies that the ethical problem of photography lies not only in the choice of subject matter but, more profoundly, in how the “division of labor” and the “continuation of action” are concretely shaped by the very practice of photography.

Value and Lineage: As Tool and Starting Point

The enduring value of On Photography can be understood on two levels:

• As a Diagnostic Tool: The book’s greatest contribution is its linking of “viewing,” “experience,” and “ethics” into a single, indivisible chain of inquiry. It provides a framework for the critical reading of images: before discussing an image’s public efficacy, one must first question how it is being “consumerized,” “aestheticized,” and “institutionalized.” For critics, curators, and journalism educators, this is a directly operational diagnostic checklist.
• As an Intellectual Starting Point: In the lineage of photo theory, Sontag’s work forms a crucial complement (focusing on social structure) to Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida (which focuses on affect/time). Sontag’s framework provided an indispensable vocabulary for subsequent critical discussions on the ethics of war imagery (Linfield), civic spectatorship (Azoulay), and the archive and governance (Sekula, Tagg). In the platform age, its warnings about image consumption and ethical distance remain an essential benchmark for understanding social media imagery and the attention economy.

On Photography teaches us to ask of any photograph before us: How does it convert lived experience into a consumable image, and how, in that process, does it quietly rewrite our ethical response?