SUSAN SONTAG: ON PHOTOGRAPHY: THE FIRST HARDCOVER EDITION - Rare Fine Copy of The First Hardcover Edition/First Printing: Signed by Susan Sontag - SIGNED ON THE PAGE ITSELF

Sontag, Susan

ISBN 10: 0374226261 / ISBN 13: 9780374226268

Published by New York City, NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1977, 1977

About this Item

1st Printing. Signed. 207 pages. Published in 1977. Retrospective collection of essays. One of the greatest books of the 20th century. The First Hardcover Edition. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only. The First Edition is now rare. Presents Susan Sontag's "On Photography". The fullest expression of her lifelong attempt to define the problematic yet inescapable relation between ethics and aesthetics, between reality and image. Her insight about "photographic seeing" remains THE most radical criticism of contemporary life: We now see the world as a series of images. For all of our pious lip service to literature, ours is (literally) a photographic - rather than word - culture: People today experience reality and express themselves through images (rather than words). These images are ALL photographically-based. Hence our dominant and voyeuristic "entertainment-cum-celebrity" culture, which depends on appearance, that is to say, it is image-based (rather than based on substance). Martin Harrison's great book on fashion/lifestyle photography is simply titled "Appearances" (1991). Reality TV, mobile phones that are also cameras, and Instagram are merely the more recent ways through which we think and feel that something isn't real until it becomes an image. When scientists snapped the first-ever photograph of the black hole (in April, 2019), they went nuts, and celebrated the image as an epochal event in human consciousness and history. The fact is that our technology-obsessed world began with the invention of the camera, which medium permanently altered our understanding of reality. Philosophy: Reality is invisible. Photography: Reality is visible. It is ironic that it took Sontag, a word-driven writer-intellectual, to realize all this back in 1977. That is precisely why she matters, a thinker who sees reality as it is, before anyone else does, and thereby makes us understand. Her sustained examination of photography will not be surpassed: As knowledge, as an instrument of moral conscience, as the art of our time, and as a uniquely evocative trace of reality that IS reality (rather than a mere imitation of it). There are only two books on photography that are great: Susan Sontag's "On Photography" and Roland Barthes' "Camera Lucida" (1981). If Sontag's book is finally, an ethics of photography, then Barthes' book is an aesthetics of photography, of the most surprising kind: Anti-systematic and sentimental. An absolute "must-have" title for Susan Sontag collectors. This copy is very boldly and beautifully signed in black pen-marker on the half-title page by Susan Sontag. It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. This title is a great book. As far as we know, this is the only such signed copy of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing available online and is in fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. Please note: Copies available online have very serious flaws or are subsequent printings. This is surely an accessible and lovely alternative. A rare signed copy thus. One of the most influential and important writer-intellectuals of the 20th century. A fine collectible copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER SUSAN SONTAG TITLES IN OUR CATALOG) ISBN 0374226261.

Seller Inventory # 24047

Bibliographic Details

• Title: SUSAN SONTAG: ON PHOTOGRAPHY: THE FIRST HARDCOVER EDITION - Rare Fine Copy of The First Hardcover Edition/First Printing: Signed by Susan Sontag - SIGNED ON THE PAGE ITSELF
• Publisher: New York City, NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1977
• Publication Date: 1977
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0374226261
• ISBN 13: 9780374226268
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition.
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Fine
• Signed: Signed by Author

About this title

Synopsis

A collection of acclaimed essays explores the aesthetic and moral problems raised by the presence and authority of the photographic image in modern-day life, considers the relation of photography to art, conscience, and knowledge, and examines the works of major photographers

From the Publisher

Winner of the National Book Critics' Circle Award for Criticism (1977), this is "a brilliant analysis of the profound changes photographic images have made in our way of looking of the world and ourselves over the lost 140 years."-Washington Post BOOK WORLD