Regarding the pain of others
While reading Regarding the Pain of Others by Sontag I see emphasize based around the perception of the war, and the way it is portrayed through media, and photography. This book was published in 2003 just a year before her death in 2004, the 26 year old had primarily a past of writing about photography, this novel was a follow up to the many essays written about photography. In Regarding the Pain of Others, Sontag gives an in depth analysis of visual representations that the war and violence get in todays culture. She describes some of the horrific images of Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Israel and Palestine, and she poses different questions to the reader such as How do these images portrayed by media affect us?
Believe it or not, a majority of what people believe about wars are completely influenced by images and different photos the see regarding war. The photos used below are examples of war extreme cruelty photos that can completely alter the opinion of someones view of war in just one sight of these, and this is the point of Sontag’s strategic wording.
In this book Regarding the Pain of Others poses many interesting ideas of war photos and this has been an ongoing thing for many years, starting well before unbearable war realities being faced, such as Vietnam. She explains something that I never knew before, she mentions how photographic documents are a rather new thing, and in the most well-known images of the First World War were staged and setup. It wasn’t until the Vietnam war where people were getting a little closer to reality of some horrific imagery.
In the end, the question being posed here is Photography taken during combat worth being trusted? Without any context or caption? People could completely intemperate these ideas completely different based on where you are from and what your cultures outlook on morals, etc are. Photography is something the is very powerful and is something that shouldn’t be undermined, and this is something that Sontag is putting lots of emphasize on, she actually was a witness of the 9/11 bombings in New York City and mentions how the imagery of these events blow the reality of the actual incident out of the water. Im sure we have all been apart of something, where the photos of the event kind of make the situation more dramatic than the situation may have been, or maybe not. The idea is that photography ids very powerful and can be used to misconceive.
Great sharing! You have objectively and seriously assessed the impact of the war on ordinary people and the sublimation of your views on Susan. The photos you saw made me feel very sad. I think these pictures can really make readers re-understand the history we never imagined. This also warns us not to trust certain media news too much. We need to understand history more objectively and “many stories matter”.
Thank you for the post! From your post, I learned much about the grimness of war, and how violence influenced the people in the poor area under the shadow of warfares. Also, besides wars, you also talked about the terrorist attacks which had really bad influence to the world, and these events are what people should meditate about.