Synopses & Reviews
Twenty-five years after her classic On Photography, Susan Sontag returns to the subject of visual representations of war and violence in our culture today.
How does the spectacle of the sufferings of others (via television or newsprint) affect us? Are viewers inured--or incited--to violence by the depiction of cruelty? In Regarding the Pain of Others, Susan Sontag takes a fresh look at the representation of atrocity--from Goya's The Disasters of War to photographs of the American Civil War, lynchings of blacks in the South, and the Nazi death camps, to contemporary horrific images of Bosnia, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Israel and Palestine, and New York City on September 11, 2001.
In Regarding the Pain of Others Susan Sontag once again changes the way we think about the uses and meanings of images in our world, and offers an important reflection about how war itself is waged (and understood) in our time.
Synopsis
Regarding the Pain of Others is Susan Sontag's searing analysis of our numbed response to images of horror.
'A coruscating sermon on how we picture suffering' The New York Times
What is the purpose of images of pain and suffering? Can there be any real justification for the creation, and consumption, of such images?
In this seminal volume, Susan Sontag examines the uses and meanings of images, from inspiring dissent to fostering violence to creating apathy. And through this lens she considers the nature of war, the limits of sympathy, and the obligations of conscience.
'A far-reaching set of ruminations ...] on what it means to be alive and alert in the twenty-first century' Independent
'Sontag is on top form: devastating' Los Angeles Times
'Simple, elegant, fiercely persuasive' Metro