Susan Sontag

I read 'On Photography' by Susan Sontag about a year ago now, and I still don't understand the book fully but the more I read into it the more it slowly starts to make sense.
I've quoted small pieces from her book which has stuck in my mind as well as being important to me and inspirational to my work.

'A photograph is both a pseudo-presence and a token of absence.'

'Each still photograph is a privileged moment, turned into a slim object that one can keep and look at again. Photographs like the one that made the front page of most newspapers in the world in 1972- a naked South Vietnamese child just sprayed by American napalm, running down the highway toward the camera, her arms open, screaming with pain- probably did more to increase the public revulsion against the war than a hundred hours of televised barbarities.' - To me personally I think this quote is trying to say photographs create a bigger impact than words as well as a memory. The photograph took of the Vietnamese child is always stuck in my head, however I couldn't imagine what the viewers thought when they first seen the photograph at the time and the real impact it portrayed.