Twenty-five years after her classic On Photography, Susan Sontag returns to the subject of visual representations of war and violence in ou...
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Jul 03, 2007
Irina
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Sontag's essay is concerned with the moral implications of looking, through photographs, at people who are suffering or dead. Much of the book is a history of war photography, which is intimately bound with the history of public tolerance of violent photos. While Sontag does not provide any revolutionary ideas, the essay is a succinct and thorough examination of the issues surrounding photography. And, if there is no grand thesis to keep in mind, her exploration is full of smaller, thought-provo
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Feb 11, 2009
Ben
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The book is disappointingly diffuse and lacking in incisiveness. This probably reflects Sontag's ambivalence about how she is supposed to react to images of death and destruction. But such ambivalence doesn't make for compelling reading, especially since the themes which she explores (e.g., the suspicious claim to objectivity of photography, voyeurism/complicity masquerading as disinterestedness in the viewer) will be familiar to anybody who has reflected on the subject.
So perhaps i More...
So perhaps i More...
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Jan 09, 2009
S.
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This is an articulate meditation mostly on war photography that didn't solve any of my problems. Somewhere at the bottom of my mind I was kind of hoping it would. Silly me. Anyway, while it's not particularly enlightening or revelatory (or helpful), the essay does help the reader focus his/her own ideas on the feelings conjured by the photography of suffering, and perhaps approach the images more intellectually.
Sontag questions an earlier idea put forward in On Photography, namely th More...
Sontag questions an earlier idea put forward in On Photography, namely th More...
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Jul 23, 2007
Hamad
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I think her ending basically sums up the whole endeavor: "We, don't understand. We don't get it. We can't imagine what it was like...That's what every soldier, and every journalist and aid worker and independent observer who has put in time under fire, and had the luck to elude the death that struck down others nearby, stubbornly feels. And they are right."
Although this makes for good subway-reading (don't have to focus much), there still seems to be not much original thoug More...
Although this makes for good subway-reading (don't have to focus much), there still seems to be not much original thoug More...
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Feb 05, 2009
Clare
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Twenty-six years after the publication of her influential collection of essays On Photography (1977), Sontag (In America) reconsiders ideas that are "now fast approaching the status of platitudes," especially the view that our capacity to respond to images of war and atrocity is being dulled by "the relentless diffusion of vulgar and appalling images" in our rapaciously media-driven culture. Sontag opens by describing Virginia Woolf's essay on the roots of war, "Three Gu
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Jul 17, 2010
Wolfram
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One of the great theorists of the erotic, Georges Bataille, kept a photograph taken in China in 1910 of a prisoner undergoing “the death of a hundred cuts” on his desk, where he could look at it every day. (Since becoming legendary, it is reproduced in the last of Bataille’s books published during his lifetime, in 1961, Les Armes d’Eros (The Tears of Eros)). “This photograph,” Bataille wrote, “had a decisive role in my life. I have never stopped being obsessed by this image of pain, at the s
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Sep 13, 2009
John
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Sontag's book examines how we receive photographic and artistic representations of human suffering. In the end, while she seems cautiously optimistic that photographs can have some positive impact on our perspective of suffering, they still don't hold a candle to actually being there and experiencing the suffering first-hand.
Most interesting to me was the theme of photographic interpretation running through the book, as she acknowledges the reality that we often see photographs as a More...
Most interesting to me was the theme of photographic interpretation running through the book, as she acknowledges the reality that we often see photographs as a More...
May 05, 2011
Lauren
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Fascinating and insightful, this book goes onto a short list of "must read" that I would recommend to anyone who is looking to take a more critical look at how they interact with the world. The book, while short and written in an approachable tone, offers many suggestions on how to think critically about the influences of media, especially that of violent and graphic images, on our concepts of right, wrong, morality, and our own personal sense of placement in the world.
While More...
While More...
Jan 11, 2012
Elliot
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Sontag's works rely more on the force of rapidfire brilliant observation than developed argumentation. It's hard to say exactly what she hopes to prove, for example, in the bulk On Photography or Illness as Metaphor -- and yet each thrives as an excellent collection of astounding interrogative cultural criticism. D.A. Miller lambasted Sontag for seemingly prioritizing her "writing" over the subjects that she tackles, although that seems to be an unnecessarily harsh condemnation of some
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Feb 27, 2010
Minodora
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sontag is one of the most accessible and fascinating essayist and critical theorists of our time. i always find her writing engaging and revelatory, and in this book she poses some interesting questions regarding the "gaze", what it means to photograph the pain of others, to be regarded as "victim", the moral quandaries those viewing and those being viewed face, what lines are being crossed and defined. all fascinating stuff, especially for photogs, or anyone interested in th
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Dec 16, 2008
Denise
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Really enjoyed this book-Sontag poses serious questions about the role of war photography.
"So far as we feel sympathy,we feel we are not accomplices to what caused the suffering. Our sympathy proclaims our innocence as well as our impotence. To that extent, it can be (for all our good intentions) an impertinent--if not an inappropriate--response. To set aside the sympathy we extend to others beset by war and murderous politics for a consideration of how our privileges are locat More...
"So far as we feel sympathy,we feel we are not accomplices to what caused the suffering. Our sympathy proclaims our innocence as well as our impotence. To that extent, it can be (for all our good intentions) an impertinent--if not an inappropriate--response. To set aside the sympathy we extend to others beset by war and murderous politics for a consideration of how our privileges are locat More...
Dec 31, 2011
Tara
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This was a short essay on the development of war images, especially in their most recent incarnation-- war photography. War images are prominent in the essay, but Sontag also address other suffering that is represented in photos and other images. Sontag explores if images of suffering are able to end suffering. It seems that images of suffering do not have the same meanings and that they are unable to stop the suffering that they represent. I liked Sontag's prose and her insistence that we need
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Jan 20, 2009
Lauren
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What is most curious about this book of essays about the power of photographs and their relation to war, suffering, outrage, and compassion, is that the only photograph that appears is that of Susan Sontag, on the inside book jacket. The lack of photos forces you to focus on the text rather than get distracted by the spectacle of an image.
Also curious is that the jacket photograph was taken by Sontag's partner, Annie Liebovitz, who she never acknowledges. I have always wondered how S More...
Also curious is that the jacket photograph was taken by Sontag's partner, Annie Liebovitz, who she never acknowledges. I have always wondered how S More...
Jan 10, 2011
Dan
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i don't have a lot to say about this. it's brief, thoughtful, clear and well-argued. i suppose it would have helped to read on photography first, since the final chapter is an update on/critique of her earlier arguments. it's on my "to-do" list now. there are some interesting historical bits about the origins of war photography, and a critique of "the society of the spectacle" (the concept, the book, the lineage of the book through people like baudrillard, etc.) that i think
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Mar 26, 2011
Kate
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This was a tough read. I knew the essays would be well-written--as Sontag is almost as good as it gets--but the subject matter was difficult to wade through. It is about war, and the rhetoric of showing photos, images and writing about the atrocities that humans commit, generally against other humans.
I would not have read this if it hadn't been assigned for a class I'm taking next quarter, though I'm glad I did. While I didn't love the subject, I'm still thinking about it, and it' More...
I would not have read this if it hadn't been assigned for a class I'm taking next quarter, though I'm glad I did. While I didn't love the subject, I'm still thinking about it, and it' More...
Dec 31, 2011
Rebecca
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Thinking about looking. I've never read On Photography, but enjoyed this book on what photographs, especially images of violence, mean to us. The book is brief and feels more like a jumping off point then a truly deep discussion. Felt a little ironic that this book is not illustrated with any of the pictures referenced. Now days it's easy enough to pop onto the Internet and look at the pictures she describes. The ending, with her discussion of Jeff Wall's "Dead Troops Talk" has been ha
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Jan 12, 2009
Wyatt
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Alright, here are a few quotes with no review:
"To the militant, identity is everything."
"...all photographs want to be explained or falsified by their captions."
"To reconcile it is necessary that memory be faulty and limited. "
"To make peace is to forget."
"A photo develops a career of its own."
"A photograph is a frame and to frame is to exclude."
Photogr More...
"To the militant, identity is everything."
"...all photographs want to be explained or falsified by their captions."
"To reconcile it is necessary that memory be faulty and limited. "
"To make peace is to forget."
"A photo develops a career of its own."
"A photograph is a frame and to frame is to exclude."
Photogr More...
Mar 07, 2010
Why concentrate this critique on photography, when other media are equally ineffective? Because, Sontag argues, “all images that display the violation of an attractive body are, to a certain degree, pornographic.” Looking at war photography is gawking at traffic accidents, hoping to see blood and bone.
But, of course, so is reading sensational news stories and watching television news. And whatever “the artist’s skill of eye and hand,” a painting depicting suffering remains art, an ae More...
But, of course, so is reading sensational news stories and watching television news. And whatever “the artist’s skill of eye and hand,” a painting depicting suffering remains art, an ae More...
Sep 26, 2008
Scott
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The best book I've read in a really, really long time. (Duh.) It's also the first Sontag I've read, believe it or not. There will be more...
Some quotables:
"So far as we feel sympathy, we feel we are not accomplices to what caused the suffering. Our sympathy proclaims our innocence as well as our impotence."
"There is no such thing as collective memory - part of the same family of spurious notions as collective guilt. But there is collective ins More...
Some quotables:
"So far as we feel sympathy, we feel we are not accomplices to what caused the suffering. Our sympathy proclaims our innocence as well as our impotence."
"There is no such thing as collective memory - part of the same family of spurious notions as collective guilt. But there is collective ins More...
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Feb 04, 2008
Ave
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Is there even a way to come to a conclusion of this kind of topic I am not sure, actually perhaps i rather say there is not. Sontag does her best to try to explain and come close to describe the reality of a photograph compared to the reality of a terror. In the end there is no real conclusion to such possibility of a comparison.
Half way thoughtful, conclusively confusing because of the lack of real structure of the essay it still does a job of describing a honest yet speculative wor More...
Half way thoughtful, conclusively confusing because of the lack of real structure of the essay it still does a job of describing a honest yet speculative wor More...
Feb 18, 2007
علی
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اگرچه سوزان سونتاگ در ایران بیشتر به یک منتقد ادبی و اجتماعی نویس معروف است، و بی تردید در این زمینه ها کارهای بزرگی تالیف کرده است، اما رمان های سونتاگ کارهای زیبایی ست که ندیده یا نشنیده ام که به فارسی ترجمه شده باشد.علت این امر برایم روشن نیست که چرا بجز چند مقاله، دیگر آثار او به فارسی برگردانده نشده. تعجب من بیش تر از آن است که در میان فمینیست های نسل تازه در ایران هم کسی در زمینه ی ترجمه ی آثار سونتاگ اقدامی نکرده است. سوزان سونتاگ که از روشنفکران آمریکایی متعلق به دهه ی 1960 است، با همان
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Aug 29, 2010
Bryan
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A very well written account of the impact of images, particularly violent images from war, and the way that such photographs have become part of culture (and the business of newspapers). Throughout the book, I was moved to tears without even seeing these images, simply by reading about them. Sontag clearly understands the subject and explains a lot about the history of war photographs and the multifarious perspectives about such images.
Nov 22, 2008
Amber
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I hadn´t read anything by Susan Sontag in a long time, so it was nice to get back to some of her articulate commentaries on photography. I particularly enjoyed this exploration into the motivations and effects that war photography has/or doesn´t have on our moral sensibilities. I wished that the book had included images of the photos discussed, but I was able to recall mental images for the majority of them -- reflecting just how powerful and memorable such images are.
Jun 07, 2011
James
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I read this as part of a discussion group at The Art Institute of Chicago. The subject of "Regarding the Pain of Others" is "atrocity photography," that sort of photography whose subject is the death or misery of other people. The book was, of course, penned in the shadow of September 11, and it seems, unfortunately, to bear a slightly burdensome responsibility to comment on the importance of things. This, however, has never been a problem for Ms. Sontag. While I appreciated
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Apr 14, 2009
melissa/missy
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A really interesting look at issues connected to photography, the gaze, representation in times of war and suffering, and the complex relationship between those who look and those who are looked at. This book deals with the outer limits of human cruelty and brutality, and how people respond when exposed to visual images of these kinds of acts.
It ends like this:
" 'We'--this 'we' is everyone who has never experienced anything like what they went through--don't understand. More...
It ends like this:
" 'We'--this 'we' is everyone who has never experienced anything like what they went through--don't understand. More...
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Oct 23, 2009
Kimberly
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An excellent book about pain, war, and it's images. Very relative to our society's current affairs with Iraq and Afghanistan.
"For those who live neither with religious consolations about death nor with a sense of death (or of anything else) as natural, death is the obscene mystery, the ultimate affront, the thing that cannot be controlled. It can only be denied."
Susan Sontag
"For those who live neither with religious consolations about death nor with a sense of death (or of anything else) as natural, death is the obscene mystery, the ultimate affront, the thing that cannot be controlled. It can only be denied."
Susan Sontag
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Sep 26, 2009
Megan
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I had to read this book for my English 102 class this quarter. It is a very good book. It raises a lot of questions and really made me think. We're still discussing the book in class and I definitely have more questions than answers right now. For example, why is it ok to publish and view photos of the dead from other countries, but not our own? What's the difference?
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Nov 10, 2011
Sian
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In genuinely beautiful prose, this essay presents genuinely clear thinking on viewing war from a privileged position of safety and on the various impacts (or lack of impact) of the depiction of war violence in U.S. media culture. I read most of the essay twice, and parts of it (Chapter 8) six or seven times, the way you'd return to a striking painting in a gallery.
Aug 06, 2011
A wonderfully written, short treatise on photography in relation to war, suffering, and the media. Memorable and beautiful quotes are found on every other page in this book. Susan Sontag gets right to the heart of the matter. I appreciated the directness and the brevity. I found it extremely useful for my installation work, Rare and Potentially Fatal.
Feb 10, 2011
I just could not get into this book. It was really an essay that she wrote, only a little under 130 pages long with relatively large print. For most books I dislike I will end up finishing but for this book, it was just so dry and dismal, I could not get past page 25. Maybe if you are really into war photography you may like this book but it was just not for me.
