ABSTRACT
On Photography serves as an example of rhetorical flourish. We interact with photography differently than Sontag did in the 1970s; accordingly, her book is seldom referenced by academics. On Photography is a historical starting point for considering the problems attendant to the ever– increasing prevalence of images in our now– digital world. It is provocative as a state of mind to reference or as a mental toolkit, but not as a scholarly resource. Sontag explicitly doubts some of her own claims and statements from her previous publication, further diminishing On Photography's standing in photography theory. Sontag's Regarding the Pain of Others has also reduced the power of the opinions she expressed so firmly in On Photography. Sontag's assertion that as photographic images gained acceptance into the fine art museum context "they become studies in the possibilities of photography and thus less about the subject of the images", was built upon further by Michael Fried.
