On Photography, 1977

[leecachu]

The possession of a camera can inspire something akin to lust. And like all credible forms of lust it cannot be satisfied; first, because the possibilities of photography are infinite; and, second, because the project is finally self-devouring. The attempts by photographers to bolster up a depleted sense of reality contribute to the depletion. Our oppressive sense of the transience of everything is more acute since cameras gave us the means to "fix" the fleeting moment. We consume images at an ever faster rate and, as Balzac suspected cameras used up layers of the body, images consume reality. Cameras are the antidote and the disease, a means of appropriating reality and means of making it obsolete.

-Susan Sontag