Sontag
Regarding the Pain of Others, by Susan Sontag
In Regarding the Pain of Others, Susan Sontag asks the reader to think about how our engagement with a photograph affects our understanding of suffering and war. Sontag evaluates the use of images and the role of photography in representing how the interpretation of images is heavily influenced by context, and the effect that these representations have on us. In doing so, Sontag addresses a few major questions concerning photography. What is unique about photography and representation? And how does the act of seeing those images influence us? Sontag offers important thoughts on these questions and challenges how the reader interprets his or her own relationship to images. Public attention is steered by the attentions of the media. Representation of photographs in the media helps make the viewer decide if something is “real” or not. This has help propel social change. Sontag focuses on how photographs show “realness” and how this can desensitize the viewer. This idea of showing the “realness” of the photograph has followed it from photography’s conception. Photographs have historically been used to document, though earlier as a scientific way. It is not that the photograph is not being used to document, nor that the subject is not real, but that photography can be used more easily though mechanical reproduction to be dispersed into the media. Sontag’s main point looks at the reproduction of photographs in the media, showing how they play a major role and how we perceive reality since media is selective and framed. According to Sontag, photography, which came into its own capturing images of World War I, possesses an inherent tension between objectivity and subjectivity. The problem with this tension is that it is not always acknowledged. Photographs are more easily accepted as fact, even though truth cannot be established without context or an understanding of the perspective of the photographer and
In Regarding the Pain of Others, Susan Sontag asks the reader to think about how our engagement with a photograph affects our understanding of suffering and war. Sontag evaluates the use of images and the role of photography in representing how the interpretation of images is heavily influenced by context, and the effect that these representations have on us. In doing so, Sontag addresses a few major questions concerning photography. What is unique about photography and representation? And how does the act of seeing those images influence us? Sontag offers important thoughts on these questions and challenges how the reader interprets his or her own relationship to images. Public attention is steered by the attentions of the media. Representation of photographs in the media helps make the viewer decide if something is “real” or not. This has help propel social change. Sontag focuses on how photographs show “realness” and how this can desensitize the viewer. This idea of showing the “realness” of the photograph has followed it from photography’s conception. Photographs have historically been used to document, though earlier as a scientific way. It is not that the photograph is not being used to document, nor that the subject is not real, but that photography can be used more easily though mechanical reproduction to be dispersed into the media. Sontag’s main point looks at the reproduction of photographs in the media, showing how they play a major role and how we perceive reality since media is selective and framed. According to Sontag, photography, which came into its own capturing images of World War I, possesses an inherent tension between objectivity and subjectivity. The problem with this tension is that it is not always acknowledged. Photographs are more easily accepted as fact, even though truth cannot be established without context or an understanding of the perspective of the photographer and