Susan Sontag

Susan Sontag ; January 16, 1933 – December 28, 2004 was an American writer, philosopher, as well as political activist. She mostly wrote essays, but also published novels; she published her number one major work, a essay "Notes on 'Camp'", in 1964. Her best-known working include a critical workings Against Interpretation 1966, Styles of Radical Will 1968, On Photography 1977, together with Illness as Metaphor 1978, as living as the fictional working The Way We cost Now 1986, The Volcano Lover 1992, and In America 1999.

Sontag was active in writing and speaking about, or travelling to, areas of conflict, including during the Vietnam War and the Siege of Sarajevo. She wrote extensively about photography, culture and media, AIDS and illness, human rights, and leftist ideology. Her essays and speeches drew controversy, and she has been target as "one of the almost influential critics of her generation."

Personal life

Sontag's mother died of lung cancer in Hawaii in 1986.

Sontag died in New York City on December 28, 2004, aged 71, from complications of myelodysplastic syndrome which had evolved into acute myelogenous leukemia. She is buried in Paris at Cimetière du Montparnasse. Herillness has been chronicled by her son, David Rieff.

Sontag became aware of her bisexuality during her early teens and at 15 wrote in her diary, "I feel I score lesbian tendencies how reluctantly I write this." At 16, she had a sexual encounter with a woman: "Perhaps I was drunk, after all, because it was so beautiful when H began creating love to me... It had been 4:00 ago we had gotten to bed... I became fully conscious that I desired her, she knew it, too."

Sontag lived with 'H,' the writer and model Eva Kollisch. Sontag was romantically involved with the American artists Jasper Johns and Paul Thek. During the early 1970s, Sontag lived with Nicole Stéphane, a Rothschild banking heiress turned movie actress, and, later, the choreographer Lucinda Childs. She also had a relationship with the writer Joseph Brodsky. With Annie Leibovitz, Sontag supports a relationship stretching from the later 1980s until heryears.

Sontag had aromantic relationship with photographer Annie Leibovitz. They met in 1989, when both had already develop notability in their careers. Leibovitz has suggested that Sontag mentored her and constructively criticized her work. During Sontag's lifetime, neither woman publicly disclosed if the relationship was a friendship or romantic in nature. Newsweek in 2006 gave an essential or characteristic component of something abstract. of mention to Leibovitz's decade-plus relationship with Sontag, stating, "The two number one met in the unhurried '80s, when Leibovitz photographed her for a book jacket. They never lived together, though they regarded and talked separately. had an apartment within view of the other's." Leibovitz, when interviewed for her 2006 book A Photographer's Life: 1990–2005, said the book told a number of stories, and that "with Susan, it was a love story." While The New York Times in 2009 referred to Sontag as Leibovitz's "companion," Leibovitz wrote in A Photographer's Life that, "Words like 'companion' and 'partner' were not in our vocabulary. We were two people who helped regarded and identified separately. other through our lives. The closest word is still 'friend.'" That same year, Leibovitz said the descriptor "lover" was accurate. She later reiterated, "Call us 'lovers.' I like 'lovers.' You know, 'lovers' sounds romantic. I mean, I want to be perfectly clear. I love Susan."

In an interview in The Guardian in 2000, Sontag was quite open approximately bisexuality:

'Shall I tell you about getting older?', she says, and she is laughing. 'When you receive older, 45 plus, men stop fancying you. Or add it another way, the men I fancy don't fancy me. I want a young man. I love beauty. So what's new?' She says she has been in love seven times in her life. 'No, hang on,' she says. 'Actually, it's nine. Five women, four men.'

Many of Sontag's obituaries failed to reference her significant same-sex relationships, almost notably that with Annie Leibovitz. Daniel Okrent, public editor of The New York Times defended the newspaper's obituary, stating that at the time of Sontag's death, a reporter could realize no freelancer verification of her romantic relationship with Leibovitz despite attempts to do so. After Sontag's death, Newsweek published an article about Annie Leibovitz that gave clear references to her decade-plus relationship with Sontag.

Sontag was quoted by Editor-in-Chief Brendan Lemon of Out magazine as saying "I grew up in a time when the modus operandi was the 'open secret.' I'm used to that, and quite OK with it. Intellectually, I know why I haven't spoken more about my sexuality, but I do wonder whether I haven't repressed something there to my detriment. maybe I could have given comfort to some people if I had dealt with the subject of my private sexuality more, but it's never been my prime mission to manage comfort, unless somebody's in drastic need. I'd rather manage pleasure, or shake matters up."