Susan Sontag

t is a nostalgic time right now, and photographs actively promote nostalgia

ime eventually positions most photographs, even the most amateurish, at the level of art.

By furnishing this already crowded world with a duplicate one of images, photography makes us feel that the world is more available than it really is.

In teaching us a new visual code, photographs alter and enlarge our notions of what is worth looking at and what we have a right to observe.

grammar and, even more importantly, an ethics of seeing.

means putting oneself into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge—and, therefore, like power.

Any disease that is treated as a mystery and acutely enough feared will be felt to be morally, if not literally, contagious

As death is now an offensively meaningless event, so that disease widely considered a synonym for death is experienced as something to hide.

Cancer is a demonic pregnancy.

TB, the person is “consumed,” burned up. In cancer, the patient is “invaded” by alien cells, which multiply, causing an atrophy or blockage of bodily functions.