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On Photography
''On Photography'' is a 1977 collection of essays by Susan Sontag. It originally appeared as a series of essays in the ''New York Review of Books'' between 1973 and 1977. Contents In the book, Sontag expresses her views on the history and present-day role of photography in capitalist societies as of the 1970s. Sontag discusses many examples of modern photography. Among these, she contrasts Diane Arbus's work with that of Depression-era documentary photography commissioned by the Farm Security Administration. She also explores the history of American photography in relation to the idealistic notions of America put forth by Walt Whitman and traces these ideas through to the increasingly cynical aesthetic notions of the 1970s, particularly in relation to Arbus and Andy Warhol. Sontag argues that the proliferation of photographic images had begun to establish within people a "chronic voyeuristic relation to the world." Among the consequences of this practice of photography is that ...
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On Photography
''On Photography'' is a 1977 collection of essays by Susan Sontag. It originally appeared as a series of essays in the ''New York Review of Books'' between 1973 and 1977. Contents In the book, Sontag expresses her views on the history and present-day role of photography in capitalist societies as of the 1970s. Sontag discusses many examples of modern photography. Among these, she contrasts Diane Arbus's work with that of Depression-era documentary photography commissioned by the Farm Security Administration. She also explores the history of American photography in relation to the idealistic notions of America put forth by Walt Whitman and traces these ideas through to the increasingly cynical aesthetic notions of the 1970s, particularly in relation to Arbus and Andy Warhol. Sontag argues that the proliferation of photographic images had begun to establish within people a "chronic voyeuristic relation to the world." Among the consequences of this practice of photography is that ...
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Polemic
Polemic () is contentious rhetoric intended to support a specific position by forthright claims and to undermine the opposing position. The practice of such argumentation is called ''polemics'', which are seen in arguments on controversial topics. A person who writes polemics, or speaks polemically, is called a ''polemicist''. The word derives , . Polemics often concern questions in religion or politics. A polemical style of writing was common in Ancient Greece, as in the writings of the historian Polybius. Polemic again became common in medieval and early modern times. Since then, famous polemicists have included satirist Jonathan Swift; Italian physicist and mathematician Galileo; French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher Voltaire; Christian anarchist Leo Tolstoy; socialist philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels; novelist George Orwell; playwright George Bernard Shaw; communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin; psycholinguist Noam Chomsky; social critics Christ ...
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The New York Review Of Books
''The New York Review of Books'' (or ''NYREV'' or ''NYRB'') is a semi-monthly magazine with articles on literature, culture, economics, science and current affairs. Published in New York City, it is inspired by the idea that the discussion of important books is an indispensable literary activity. ''Esquire'' called it "the premier literary-intellectual magazine in the English language." In 1970, writer Tom Wolfe described it as "the chief theoretical organ of Radical Chic". The ''Review'' publishes long-form reviews and essays, often by well-known writers, original poetry, and has letters and personals advertising sections that had attracted critical comment. In 1979 the magazine founded the ''London Review of Books'', which soon became independent. In 1990 it founded an Italian edition, ''la Rivista dei Libri'', published until 2010. The ''Review'' has a book publishing division, established in 1999, called New York Review Books, which publishes reprints of classics, as well as ...
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Library Of America
The Library of America (LOA) is a nonprofit publisher of classic American literature. Founded in 1979 with seed money from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation, the LOA has published over 300 volumes by authors ranging from Mark Twain to Philip Roth, Nathaniel Hawthorne to Saul Bellow, including selected writing of several U.S. presidents. Overview and history The ''Bibliothèque de la Pléiade'' ("La Pléiade") series published in France provided the model for the LOA, which was long a dream of critic and author Edmund Wilson. The initial organizers included American academic Daniel Aaron,Cromie, William J., Ken Gewertz, Corydon Ireland, and Alvin Powell"Honorary degrees awarded at Commencement's Morning Exercises", ''Harvard Gazette''. June 7, 2007. Lawrence Hughes, Helen Honig Meyer, and Roger W. Straus Jr. The initial board of advisers included Robert Penn Warren, C. Vann Woodward, R. W. B. Lewis, Robert Coles, Irving Howe, and Eudora Wel ...
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Random House
Random House is an American book publisher and the largest general-interest paperback publisher in the world. The company has several independently managed subsidiaries around the world. It is part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by German media conglomerate Bertelsmann. History Random House was founded in 1927 by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer, two years after they acquired the Modern Library imprint from publisher Horace Liveright, which reprints classic works of literature. Cerf is quoted as saying, "We just said we were going to publish a few books on the side at random," which suggested the name Random House. In 1934 they published the first authorized edition of James Joyce's novel ''Ulysses'' in the Anglophone world. ''Ulysses'' transformed Random House into a formidable publisher over the next two decades. In 1936, it absorbed the firm of Smith and Haas—Robert Haas became the third partner until retiring and selling his share back to Cerf and Klopfer in 19 ...
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Allan Lane
Allan "Rocky" Lane (born Harry Leonard Albershardt; September 22, 1909 – October 27, 1973) was an American studio leading man and the star of many cowboy B-movies in the 1940s and 1950s. He appeared in more than 125 films and TV shows in a career lasting from 1929 to 1966. He is best known for his portrayal of Red Ryder and for being the voice of the talking horse on the television series ''Mister Ed'', beginning in 1961. Biography Lane was born as Harry Leonard Albershardt or Albershart (sources differ) in Mishawaka, Indiana to Linnie Anne and William H. Albershardt. He grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Lane had been a photographer, model and stage actor by age 20. Lane played varsity sports (baseball, football, and basketball) at the University of Notre Dame but dropped out in order to pursue his interests in acting. Film career He was spotted by Fox Film Corporation (later 20th Century Fox) talent scouts and was signed to a contract. His first film role for Fox was ...
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Farrar, Straus And Giroux
Farrar, Straus and Giroux (FSG) is an American book publishing company, founded in 1946 by Roger Williams Straus Jr. and John C. Farrar. FSG is known for publishing literary books, and its authors have won numerous awards, including Pulitzer Prizes, National Book Awards, and Nobel Prizes. the publisher is a division of Macmillan, whose parent company is the German publishing conglomerate Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. Founding Farrar, Straus, and Company was founded in 1945 by Roger W. Straus Jr. and John C. Farrar. The first book was ''Yank: The G.I. Story of the War'', a compilation of articles that appeared in ''Yank, the Army Weekly'', then ''There Were Two Pirates'', a novel by James Branch Cabell. The first years of existence were rough until they published the diet book ''Look Younger, Live Longer'' by Gayelord Hauser in 1950. The book went on to sell 500,000 copies and Straus said that the book carried them along for a while. In the early years, Straus and his wife ...
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AIDS And Its Metaphors
''AIDS and Its Metaphors'' is a 1989 work of critical theory by Susan Sontag. In this companion book to her ''Illness as Metaphor'' (1978), Sontag extends her arguments about the metaphors attributed to cancer to the AIDS crisis. Sontag explores how attitudes to disease are formed in society, and attempts to deconstruct them. Overview ''Illness as Metaphor'' was a response to Sontag’s experiences as a cancer patient, as she noticed that the cultural myths surrounding cancer negatively impacted her as a patient. She finds that, a decade later, cancer is no longer swathed in secrecy and shame, but has been replaced by AIDS as the disease most demonized by society. She finds that the metaphors that we associate with disease contribute not only to stigmatizing the disease, but also stigmatizing those who are ill. She believes that the distractions of metaphors and myths ultimately cause more fatalities from this disease. Discussing illness in metaphorical terms is not new, but Sonta ...
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Illness As Metaphor
''Illness as Metaphor'' is a 1978 work of critical theory by Susan Sontag, in which she challenged the victim-blaming in the language that is often used to describe diseases and the people affected by them. Teasing out the similarities between public perspectives on cancer (the paradigmatic disease of the 20th century before the appearance of AIDS), and tuberculosis (the symbolic illness of the 19th century), Sontag showed that both diseases were popularly associated with personal psychological traits. In particular, she said that the metaphors and terms used to describe both syndromes lead to an association between repressed passion and the physical disease itself. She wrote about the peculiar reversal that "With the modern diseases (once TB, now cancer), the romantic idea that the disease expresses the character is invariably extended to assert that the character causes the disease—because it has not expressed itself. Passion moves inward, striking and blighting the deepest ...
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Regarding The Pain Of Others
''Regarding the Pain of Others'' is a 2003 book-length essay by Susan Sontag, which was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award. It was her last published book before her death in 2004. It is regarded by many to be a follow-up or addendum to ''On Photography,'' despite the fact that the two essay collections convey Sontag's radically different opinions about photography. The essay is especially interested in war photography. Using photography as evidence for her opinions, Sontag sets out to answer one of the three questions posed in Virginia Woolf's book ''Three Guineas ''Three Guineas'' is a book-length essay by Virginia Woolf, published in June 1938. Background Although ''Three Guineas'' is a work of non-fiction, it was initially conceived as a "novel–essay" which would tie up the loose ends left in her ...'', "How in your opinion are we to prevent war?" While debunking a certain number of common misconceptions (including some to which she contributed) con ...
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Michael Lesy
Michael Lesy (born 1945) is an American non-fiction writer. His books, which combine historical photographs with original writing, include '' Wisconsin Death Trip'' (1973), ''Real Life: Louisville in the Twenties'' (1976), ''Bearing Witness: A Photographic Chronicle of American Life'' (1982), ''Visible Light'' (1985), ''Murder City: The Bloody History of Chicago in the Twenties'' (2007), ''Repast: Dining Out at the Dawn of the New American Century'' (with Lisa Stoffer, 2013), ''Looking Backward: A Photographic Portrait of the World at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century'' (2017), and ''Snapshots 1971–77'' (September 2021). Lesy grew up in Shaker Heights, Ohio. In 2013 Lesy was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ... for Photography Stu ...
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Colin Westerbeck
Colin Leslie Westerbeck Jr. is a curator, writer, and teacher of the history of photography. Before moving to Los Angeles, where he has taught at UCLA and University of Southern California, USC, he was curator of photography at the Art Institute of Chicago. He is a regular contributor to publications such as the ''Los Angeles Times'' and ''West Magazine''. Before he began writing on photography, he was a film critic for ''Commonweal (magazine), Commonweal''. Awards *Reva and David Logan Prize for New Writing on Photography. *Art Critic's Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. *Received a grant, along with Joel Meyerowitz, from the National Endowment for the Humanities for research on the history of street photography. *2000: J. Dudley Johnston Award from the Royal Photographic Society for the writing of photographic criticism and history. Publications * * * * * * * * * * References External linksWesterbeck interview with Irit Krygier, 2009
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