To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them that they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed. Just as a camera is a sublimation of the gun, to photograph someone is a subliminal murder - a soft murder, appropriate to a sad, frightened time.
Susan Sontag (2011). “On Photography”, p.16, Macmillan
![To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them that they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed. Just as a](http://cdn.myquotes.org/images/susan-sontag/to-photograph-people-is-to-violate-them-by-seeing-them-as-they-never-see-themselves-by-having-knowledge-of-them.jpg)