Text: "Introduction" to Peter Hujar's Portraits in Life and Death by Susan Sontag + Known and Strange Things by Teju Cole

Date: Sun, May 11th at 2pm

Location: Lower East Side with Kyle and staoue

Photography, Susan Sontag writes, has the strange power to transform a moment in a subject's life into an item for consumption. In this sense, photography is a kind of death. It "converts the whole world into a cemetery."

The gravity of this role — photograph as epitaph — becomes even more troubling in light of the new conditions within which photos are produced and shared (as observed by Teju Cole). Photography made experience into a good; now the internet has furnished the ultimate marketplace for its consumption.

In this Study, we'll reflect on photography's role in the itemization and depreciation of human experience. What strategies do we have to resist this trend? Can photography be rescued from the Attention Economy?

To participate in a Sidewalk Study, please join us for an Attention Lab or Seminar to join our list.

Read more about Sidewalk Studies HERE.