Susan Sontag (/ˈsɒntɑːɡ/; January 16, 1933 – December 28, 2004) was an American writer and filmmaker, literary icon, and political activist. Beginning with the publication of her 1964 essay "Notes on 'Camp'" Sontag became a lifelong international cultural and intellectual celebrity. Sontag was often photographed and her image became widely recognized even in mainstream society. Her works include On Photography, Against Interpretation, The Way We Live Now, and Regarding the Pain of Others.
Read more about Susan Sontag: Life, Work, Activism, Controversies, Personal Life, Awards and Honors
Famous quotes by susan sontag:
“Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art. Even more. It is the revenge of the intellect upon the world. To interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world—in order to set up a shadow world of ‘meanings.’”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“Though collecting quotations could be considered as merely an ironic mimetism—victimless collecting, as it were ... in a world that is well on its way to becoming one vast quarry, the collector becomes someone engaged in a pious work of salvage. The course of modern history having already sapped the traditions and shattered the living wholes in which precious objects once found their place, the collector may now in good conscience go about excavating the choicer, more emblematic fragments.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“We live under continual threat of two equally fearful, but seemingly opposed, destinies: unremitting banality and inconceivable terror. It is fantasy, served out in large rations by the popular arts, which allows most people to cope with these twin specters.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“In the final analysis, ‘style’ is art. And art is nothing more or less than various modes of stylized, dehumanized representation.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“Mallarme said that everything in the world exists in order to end in a book. Today everything exists to end in a photograph.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)