Regarding the Pain of Others essays

Regarding the Pain of Others essays Sontag's book takes an intimate look at the way we chronicle war and death in our society. Her essays on photography have become legendary, and this book is no exception. Sontag believes that seeing graphic displays of the horrors of war have left us jaded and unemotional about what we are viewing. As she notes late in the book, "To speak of reality becoming a spectacle is a breathtaking provincialism. It universalizes the viewing habits of a small, educated population living in the rich part of the world, where news has been converted into entertainment" (Sontag 110). Sontag discusses photography from as far back as America's Civil War, and uses the thoughts and writings of others to help make her case, that modern photojournalism has numbed us to the horrors of war, and as such, actually It is quite clear Sontag is a fan of photography and what it can capture, and that she is not a far of war or terror. She notes, "Ever since cameras were invented in 1839, photography has kept company with death" (Sontag 24). This is an interesting and compelling look at photography. People tend to think of photography as a means to capture occasions to remember - birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, and such. However, Sontag's view of photography is much darker, but certainly more based in reality. Photography freezes a moment in time, and good photography can move a viewer to a wide range of emotions. All one has to do is view of photo of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center towers, and violent and vivid emotions almost always come into play. This is the foundation of Sontag's thesis, that photography can elicit violent emotions, but that society has become so used to seeing violent photography, that we are immune to the horrors, and out of touch with the violence and terror of war. The vivid photos of destruction and ...