I was just a girl when I first opened Susan Sontag’s On Photography. I had no idea that reading this book could change not merely my view of photography, but of life itself.
Sontag wrote about photography not as a technique, but as a way to understand the world, to capture time and emotion, to notice what often goes unseen. I remember sitting on my bed, my pillow damp with tears, realising that every photograph carries a responsibility — for the story, for the gaze, for the feeling. As Sontag herself said:
“Photographs really are experience captured, and the camera is the ideal arm of consciousness in its acquisitive mood.”
That night, I took my very first shot in my mind. No camera, no technique — just with my eyes and heart I captured a moment, saw the interplay of light and shadow. And I understood: photography would be my art, my way of being attentive to life.
Someday I will write my own book. It will be my vision, which I will share with the world — through dark waters into a luminous future.
Sontag taught me that every shot matters, that meaning hides in every detail, and that photography is an ongoing conversation with the world.