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4.08 AVERAGE
4.08 AVERAGE
informative
reflective
medium-paced
read this for a paper i'm writing for uni, very interesting and it sparked some ideas for further research :)
informative
reflective
fast-paced
informative
reflective
medium-paced
challenging
informative
medium-paced
informative
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slow-paced
"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--that mature style of viewing which is a prime acquisition of 'the modern', and a prerequisite for dismantling traditional forms of party-based politics that offer real disagreement and debate."
dark
emotional
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medium-paced
challenging
dark
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tense
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For some reviews you know how it is you want to start a review, while for the others you have just a vague idea, but nothing tangible. Such is the case for Susan Sontag’s “Regarding the pain of others”.
This is the first work I read by Mrs. Sontag about the topic quite foreign to me. Truth be told, I did end up googling and reading a lot of additional materials, since I am that type of fastidious reader who cannot “just skip” a referenced author, image or photographer unknown to him. This extra research labor to investigate the references probably took around 40% of the total reading time.
The funny thing is, I did enjoy this in-depth exploration of the book, which is clearly visible in my final of 5/5 rating for the book. The reason I brought up the references in the first place is to suggest that for the people familiar with other works by Mrs. Sontag or those who are not interested in delving deep into historical examples and cases from the fields of photography, images, art and history this book may feel like a struggle to get through.
Now, finally, to the spoiler-free review! Theoretically to make it easier, you can divide this book into 2 parts. The first half of the book is mainly dedicated to the history of war paintings, photography and similar topics leading up to the second part concerned with the more sociological/psychological exploration of human behavior related to the question of how and why we perceive images/photos of atrocities, pain, war and other human catastrophes a certain way and what stands behind it.
More than once did I catch myself thinking: “Wow, I never thought about it this way” or “I had a feeling about something like this but never questioned why is it so”. Here are two examples to illustrate:
1) We (at least the culture and environment that I grew up in) never talk much about the wars that weren’t filmed/photographed or the ones that didn’t include white European-looking people.
2) It is hard for victims to mourn other victims during their suffering. English photographer Paul Lowe who was actively working in Sarajevo during the years of the siege of the city after some years decided to make an exhibition of his works from Sarajevo and the previous one in Somalia.
“The Sarajevans though eager to see new pictures of the ongoing destruction of their city, were offended by the inclusion of the Somalia pictures… To set their sufferings alongside the sufferings of another people was to compare them (which hell was worse?), demoting Sarajevo’s martyrdom to a mere instance. The atrocities taking place in Sarajevo have nothing to do with what happens in Africa they exclaimed”. pp. 112-113
The book was published in 2003, yet the topics reviewed still are relevant today, if you substitute the TV to Instagram or TikTok the arguments still hold up today. Sometimes we don’t get arguments, but rather a lot of difficult and open-ended questions, which may seem simple on the surface, but provide a challenge if you try to answer them for yourself.
Ask yourself, is photography art or documentation? Can we say that a picture of human death/disaster caused by war/nature can be aesthetically pleasing to look at? Such are some of the war pictures or the aftermath of some disasters. And if we like these pictures, does it make us morally wrong or prone to enjoying violence?
“Photographs that depict suffering shouldn’t be beautiful, as captions shouldn’t moralize. In this view, a beautiful photograph drains attention from the sobering subject and turns it toward the medium itself, thereby compromising the picture’s status as a document. The photograph gives mixed signals. Stop this, it urges. But it also exclaims, What a spectacle!” pp.76-77
Sometimes you read about something that you think you know, only to find out that you don’t. For me such was the case for the definition of “Collective memory”, which I encountered in texts and media daily, but rarely questioned my own meaning of the word and the reasoning behind it.
“All memory is individual, unreproducible – it dies with each person. What is called collective memory is not a remembering but a stipulating: that THIS is important, and this is the story about how it happened, with the pictures that lock the story in our minds”. p.86
The other interesting argument revolves around the feeling of compassion, a.i. “compassion is an unstable emotion It needs to be translated into action, or it withers”. Think about it for a second. You see a picture of civilians who suffer or die day after day in some distant war/conflict you see on TV or in your feed. Since you are a decent human being with a heart you start to feel compassionate and empathetic towards the victims, survivors and their families, but how long do you think your compassion lasts? How long until it evaporates and you start looking at the news as something mundane and routine to keep yourself “up to date”.
“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 set aside the sympathy we extend to others beset by war and murderous politics for a reflection on how our privileges are located on the same map as their suffering, and may – in ways we prefer not to imagine – be linked to their suffering, as the wealth of some may imply the destitution of others, is a task for which the painful, stirring images supply only an initial spark”. pp. 102-103
Without any form of participation, you are just an observer and an observer is someone who can naturally get bored of looking, prompting him/her to “switch” the attention to some new tragedy which ignites compassion all over again and the cycle continues. This explains the inaction of both a citizen inside a war-torn country and an outsider watching videos or photos of a war on TV or phone.
“As one can become habituated to horror in real life, one can become habituated to the horror of certain images”. P.82
The unwillingness to question our privilege of being able to be an observer is a very real thing (even if sometimes their unwillingness to acknowledge it and their lack of inaction can be a cause of human suffering or injustice in the world) in our current digital age where the access to constant flow information is literally a click away.
Concluding my longest review so far, I would like to say that this book urged me to think and pose questions about the meaning and implications of photography/pictures/journalism and much more through self-reflection on my own perception, behavior and habits.
One of the main reasons why I chose this book in the first place was to get answers for myself on why is it that we regard the pain of others a certain way? I would argue that we owe it to ourselves to look for the answer within us. As the world slowly moves into a new decade of uncertainty, the pain and suffering seem as inevitable as ever.
The question is critical not only for those whose country is subject to systematic pain and suffering brought upon a civilian population by war or other disaster, but to those who watch and observe from a safe distance.
If we strive to live in a better world and respect the core values of humanism, the location doesn’t matter, what matters is the action which one takes and the consequential responsibility to act not as an observer, but as a fellow human being.
informative
reflective
fast-paced
Para mi la madre de los ensayos de nuestros tiempos es Susan. Genia, genialidad de libro