Existing comment:
Susan Sontag
1933–2004
Born New York City
Susan Sontag's desire to accomplish what she termed "self-transendence" coincided with the emergence of a 1960s counterculture. She became an international icon after the 1964 publication of her essay "Notes on ‘Camp,'" a study of the aesthetics of artifice and popular culture. Soon thereafter, Against Interpretation (1966), a volume of her critical writings, reinforced her status.
During the 1980s, Sontag chronicled the impact of the AIDS epidemic on artists and intellectuals in such pieces as "The Way We Live Now" (1986), which she penned for the New Yorker. In a later work, Regarding the Pain of Others (2003), she explored the disconnect between images of war, the experiences they represent, and the audiences that consume those images. The book was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Throughout Sontag's life, she was dedicated to freedom of expression and the advancement of literature, which she declared "the passport to enter a larger life; that is, the zone of freedom."
Peter Hujar (1934–1987)
Gelatin silver print, 1975 |