Take a photo of a barcode or cover
4.08 AVERAGE
4.08 AVERAGE
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
still relevant.
Susan Sontag is very smart and I feel slightly smarter having read this
informative
reflective
sad
informative
fast-paced
I´ll think about this book forever.
dark
informative
reflective
medium-paced
After seeing so many haunting images from Gaza of Palestinians either dead or dying, many of them children, I wanted to understand it all better. Whether violent imagery creates lasting pathos, whether we should look or if it's just self flagellation, and whether images like these can actually make significant change.
These are admittedly very complicated questions to answer, so Sontag's ideas have left me feeling both less and more confused. Maybe it's harder to compare the almost real-time images from Motaz's Instagram stories to the war images filtered through television companies and journalists. Maybe it's a whole different beast seeing images of death through the eyes of someone you have a parasocial relationship with.
But I did leave this book feeling like I understood the desire to document and witness these atrocities, despite all the complications that come along with it. And all the emotions that can come up for people for different reasons, how sympathy can turn to apathy when someone feels hopeless to stop the suffering.
These are admittedly very complicated questions to answer, so Sontag's ideas have left me feeling both less and more confused. Maybe it's harder to compare the almost real-time images from Motaz's Instagram stories to the war images filtered through television companies and journalists. Maybe it's a whole different beast seeing images of death through the eyes of someone you have a parasocial relationship with.
But I did leave this book feeling like I understood the desire to document and witness these atrocities, despite all the complications that come along with it. And all the emotions that can come up for people for different reasons, how sympathy can turn to apathy when someone feels hopeless to stop the suffering.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Death, Genocide, Gore, Misogyny, Racism, Rape, Sexism, Sexual violence, Slavery, Suicide, Torture, Violence, Blood, Antisemitism, Grief, Colonisation, War, Injury/Injury detail
Sontag is incredibly clear and concise in her analysis of graphic representations of suffering and atrocity. She cleanly breaks down the political purposes of such images and their historical, moral, and artistic dimensions.
super relevant & interesting i think the only “ lack “ i found was my own in being able to connect what she says here into our current context of media
history, art, language, politics, it is all covered in this short text
i thought this would be poignant right now considering the aggressive bombing of Gaza and it was
sontag accomplishes so much with very few words
i thought this would be poignant right now considering the aggressive bombing of Gaza and it was
sontag accomplishes so much with very few words