Susan Sontag’s “Regarding the Pain of Others” is a book focused on war photography. It explores the relationship between the suffering of the person reflected in the image and the viewer.When suffering all kinds of inhumanity, darkness, misery, life and death, all we do is slide the phone, turn on the TV, and click the mouse. While browsing the interpreted so-called news images, smacking the fragrant coffee, watching and sighing for a while, we continue our respective lives. All these have forced war photography to get closer to the vague images in exchange for a short stay of people’s attention, and this behavior itself also makes war photography and readers more indifferent.
War is the subject we are covering this week. When we hear the word “war”, we first think of inhumanity, darkness and death. In this article, the author described to us countless tragic war scenes, such as the American Civil War, which was the first large-scale war after the Industrial Revolution. Most of the 3.5 million people who participated in the war were volunteers. The war killed 750,000 soldiers, maimed 400,000 soldiers, and an unknown number of civilians were also affected. All these figures and bloody photos remind people of the importance of world peace.
But what this book wants to highlight is that as bystanders who have not experienced war, can we really perceive such pain? The pain of being photographed itself is inconsistent with reality, because even if it is not taken for the sake of art, photography itself is artistic. The photographer hopes that through such a tragic scene, people can see the pain of others and work hard to do something. But when it arouses people’s mercy, what he shows is not a real scene in itself. There are some photos that we will shudder every time we turn them over. If you have ever stared at some photos of torture, you must be able to leave in your mind the feeling of being in an extremely shocking state that is hard to erase. What we have for suffering is often more than pure pity, because how is pity felt? Why do we have mercy on certain things, all we can use is our own memory. (Susan 20)The suffering caused by war is beyond our comprehension, although we can see the scene of war through photos, so we call for world peace.
Work Cited:
Sontag, Susan. “’Regarding the Pain of Others’.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 23 Mar. 2003, www.nytimes.com/2003/03/23/books/chapters/regarding-the-pain-of-others.html.
“Regarding the Pain of Others by Susan Sontag.” Goodreads, Goodreads, 26 Aug. 2004, www.goodreads.com/book/show/52373.Regarding_the_Pain_of_Others.
When I think of war, I think of mass destruction and bloodshed. It’s a shame that millions and millions of people have lost their lives to war being brought to their doorstep. I like how you mentioned that the bloody figures and photos remind us of how terrible war can be. Unfortunately history has repeated itself many times. I’m praying us and our children never have to experience anything like that. Great post!
War photography can often be hard to look at, as these images portray pain and suffering. I think seeing photos like this pushes people to try and find peaceful ways to solve conflicts, rather than using violence. The viewer will never understand the agony that the individual/s went through, but through the picture, the viewer can recognize that they never want to experience this suffering.
I enjoyed reading your post and understanding the perspective you offer about the relationship between photos and their viewers, specifically when discussing war and conflict. No matter where or through what platform we view photos, we will never be able to fully grasp or feel what the individuals in the photos feel, whether the feelings are upbeat or negative. And I think this is something that we can’t control but should nonetheless acknowledge. We must understand that while it’s easy for us to simply swipe through a photo or feel a small amount of pity for the individuals in a photo for a short moment, we don’t have the full story nor do we know exactly the emotional state of those in the photos. As we’ve recently learned, photos are not always objective, even if we like to think this is the way things are, and there is always a slight bias in the ways certain photos are captured and distributed to the public. As critical learners, readers, and viewers, we must keep this in mind as we seek to understand as much of the story behind certain photos as we can, even if it’s slight.
War photography may be hard for us to look at, but imagine living in war seeing the damage and deaths all around you. When we discuss this topic we need to think of this perspective as well as our own. When viewing war photography, we can choose to look away because it is scary, but it is important to learn from the past. The images show the consequences of war, and we need to learn about what causes war to prevent war.
I really enjoyed your analysis of this novel and of war photography. War photography is all about capturing armed conflict and its effects on people and places. But what the photograph shows definitely does not describe the full picture of what is actually happening. Yes, when you look at war photography it could be graphic and scary and sad but the viewer does not and cannot actually feel what the soldiers felt at the time the photograph was taken. I feel like war photography is definitely supposed to invoke some of that feeling onto us but it was never be the full amount of tragedy that the people involved in the war felt at that specific time. Even though we cannot feel the full amount of sadness and pain, we know that we would never want to experience that for ourselves. I think that it why war photography, war novels and obviously textbooks that include some of the most destructive wars in history exist because we are now supposed to look and read those things to try to find a way to prevent it.
I really enjoyed your post this week, it captured great points and how you compared photography to actual moments. The war through photography is definitely different than actually being present in the war, history has shown and repeated itself many times throughout the years. Overall, great post!
First, I thought this was a really great presentation and a cool topic to discuss! I agree with what other students have said about war photography and the feelings it wishes to evoke. Most of my experience hearing about war photography before is from a WWII class I took in high school. We often discussed what the picture was supposed to mean to people at home during the war. I think that a key part of this is looking at the timing of it. For example, today these images may display feelings of remorse, but when the war was really occurring, people looked at it as much more, almost a sense of pride that made them want to contribute to the cause. War photography can mean so much more than pain and suffering in my opinion. Furthermore, we discussed in another class how photos can be taken out of context in which it is only a glimpse of what is really happening so I think that is an important thing to remember so that we can avoid the single story idea. Overall, great job and great comments everyone!
This is definitely a very important topic to talk about! Especially because people in the younger generations have never experienced war like those in the pictures have, we aren’t able to empathize. I think this relates back to any sort of literature we read. Without seeing photos, it is hard to imagine what it would look like. But without actually being there when this event in history happens, you aren’t able to internalize it like those who have.
Great post! War photograph was one topic I personally thought about before this weeks module. This post sheds light perfectly on a topic that isn’t necessarily noticed by most people. War photography is important to those wanting to truly know what’s going on onsite. It is very hard to understand for those alive at the time to imagine a war zone without an image. Also it’s documenting a huge point in history therefore the photos serve purpose for literally history books and articles.
I really liked the analysis you made on war photography. These photographs are so important to show those who are not face to face with the war. Obviously during the civil war, Americans were experiencing the war up close and personal but with wars over the past years no war has been in America. So Americans today do not always understand the devastation because they are not experiencing but these photographs are able to show the emotion and darkness of wars.
Great post on analyzing the book and presentation. War is a hard topic to discuss and getting glimpses of it through photos is even harder. Viewing photos of war come with violence, destruction and bloodshed. I think it’s important we have documentation of the horrific scenes so we don’t make the same mistakes again in history. We can learn from the past and learn from wars. I can only imagine the perspective of people that actually been through wars and what they experienced.
I think the point about the immediate thoughts of war you made were very interesting, I had never thought about this before at all. When you step back and look at the images you really see a fuller and enriched picture, you see the people for who they are, not just all of the bloodshed and things going on on either side. War photography is kind of beautiful in that way that it just gives so much deeper of a side.
War is something we are all afraid of because there is only large-scale damage in war. There is no war that will not cause thousands of deaths. I don’t like to see these photos about war, but the stories behind these photos still arouse our deep thoughts
I thought your post was very interesting because it highlights how we have become almost desensitized to violent imagery and war photos. The meaning behind presenting this imagery is to get viewers to empathize and understand the feeling behind the photos. It is to emphasize the destructive nature and terror behind war and violence. However, after seeing images such as this over and over by opening up twitter or instagram, we can become extremely desensitized to it. Without active knowledge, we become ignorant that these things should not be happening and the negative connotation that is meant to align with the imagery becomes more negligent and apathetic.
Beautifully written post. I also agree that since most of us have not experienced trying to survive a war or similar to having the place that you call home being destroyed. We can also become desensitize because were only looking at photos and reading testimonies, we may sympathize and feel certain emotions but we would truly never be able to empathize to the point where we know exactly how it felt.
Is really a good analysis, most of us understand to the war in fact is not, through war photography, can let us understand the cruelty of war, but we can’t really realize the experience of the war the people will have what kind of pain, also can’t really feel their mood, realize only war bitter and sympathy to them.
This is a great presentation. I agree that it is hard for people that have not shared the experience from a photo to have true feelings about what has happened. I think that what helps is knowing the difference between sympathy and empathy. It is easy to look at a photo and have sympathy for the person or people in the photo ad fell bad for them but to be able to put yourself in their shoes and feel what they are feeling takes the meaning to a whole other level.