ABSTRACT
Critics from the photographic community were predominantly hostile as they saw the book as an attack on the medium. Susan Sontag made little effort to defend herself against these attacks. The initial critical reception of Susan Sontag's On Photography (1977) is one of the most extraordinary events in the history of photography and cultural criticism. No other photography book [had] received a wider range of press coverage than On Photography'. Michael Starenko, "Sontag's Reception", Afterimage. Sontag's critique of photography was overshadowed as art critics and theorists like Douglas Crimp, Abigail Solomon-Godeau, Allan Sekula, and Rosalind Krauss protested the way in which the art-historical establishment co-opted photography as art. One of Sontag's core arguments was that photographs had an anesthetizing effect, that they numbed us to the plight of the world. However, she would later reverse her opinion when describing photographs of disasters and atrocities in regarding the Pain of Others in 2003.
