Question

In Susan Sontags book " On Photography" chapter 4 The Heroism of Vision explain what she talking about in the chapter, the two most important parts of the essay, the idea behind it and why the essay is important as a whole.

Answer 1

Susan Sontag’s “The Heroism of Vision” is an analysis and discussion about the relationship between the beauty in truth and their development throughout the history of photography. According to Sontag photography is concerned to the discovery of what is beautiful in the world. It was through this scale that photography is said to be the standard of what the meaning of beauty is. He argued that the photography has that capacity with which it can forge the reality for the needs of aesthetic pleasures. He makes such an argument against the claim that photography and camera have the potential to lie about the truth. He describes the early fascination of the photography with the close-ups. For Sontag one of the most fascinating successes of the photography was that it had the ability to change an object into a living thing and a living thing into an object. Camera possesses the power of viewing things in a real and a new way. Photography for him was very intensive and cool but to maintain this, the photography required the element of shock so as to remain relevant and continue its effect on vision. Sontag called this nature of photography as “The heroism of vision” as the camera has the ability to transform reality into a beautiful thing.