ABSTRACT
Susan Sontag’s book On Photography has become canonical in the study of photography. In this chapter, I examine this volume along with her later Representing the Pain of Others and two concluding essays published posthumously that critique and develop the ideas expressed in the earlier work and bring that work up to date with the War on Terror(ism) and the photographs from Abu Ghraib. Sontag became increasingly aware of the bureaucratic surveillance placed on the photographic lens, which I help to articulate using the ideas of Michel Foucault, Hannah Arendt, and Walter Benjamin. I analyze Sontag’s writings on photography through her examination of photographers Edward Steichen and Diane Arbus, and Robert Mapplethorpe. The importance of curatorship of photographs in museums is examined through Sontag’s engagement with collecting as seen through the work of Walter Benjamin. I conclude this chapter with an analysis of her final works on photography, which include a collection of aphorisms and an analysis of the photos of Abu Ghraib, which show the nasty underbelly of America’s War on Terror(ism).
