Regarding the pain of others

Abstract

Regarding the Pain of Others is a meditative analysis of the iconography of suffering by the late cultural and literary critic Susan Sontag. Her contemplation, replete with historical, literary, and photographic references, requires neither a thorough understanding of pho-tography theory or art criticism, nor any knowledge of the history of documentary pho-tography or photojournalism. The descriptions are vivid and eloquent, never reductive, and thus suffice to keep anyone – not exclusively photography aficionados – morally attentive to the significance of timeless visual testimonies to human suffering. In fact, one can devour Regarding the Pain of Others without realizing that Susan Sontag, faithful to her rigorous intellectual method, chose not to include a single photograph in it. A reasoned outlook on our tropistic predilection for grisly images of war and distress, this book revises the stance taken in On Photography (Sontag, 1977/2001), Sontag’s seminal work on photography criticism. Her vision of the impact of photography has evolved from one that has become trite to one – in the 2003 edition of Regarding the Pain of Others – that embraces the complexity of our ‘prurient interest ’ (Sontag, 2003: 95) in depictions of pain and depravity, which has intrigued countless thinkers since Plato.