On Photography

“A Brief Anthology of Quotations” is written in the style of The Arcades Project, the uncompleted magnum opus of Walter Benjamin, a German Jewish philosopher and cultural critic. Benjamin’s work details 19th-century Parisian life through an eclectic collection of quotations from 19th-century sources on various aspects of Parisian life, from photography to sex work. In homage to Benjamin, Sontag has curated a collection of quotes on photography from sources ranging from advertisements to Baudelaire to iconic photographers like Arbus. Sontag uses these quotes to form an impressionistic constellation that conveys the ideas about photography that she has cultivated throughout her essays. The anthology of quotations is meant to reinforce these ideas by presenting a montage of ideas and passages that, taken together, present real-world examples of Sontag’s ideas.