Truong 1
Minh Truong
Dr. Peter Erickson
HONR 292
11/10/2017
In her book Regarding the Pain of Others, Susan Sontag points to the problematic nature of photographs of human suffering. What are the strengths and the drawbacks of these photographs, for Sontag?
Photographs have a strong ability to tell a story when taken at the right moment and in the right context. The book by Ms. Susan Sontag is a study of wartime photography that begins with a discussion of a book by Virginia Woolf published in 1938 titled ‘Three Guineas.’ Three Guineas is an exploration of the source of war through an examination of a set of photographs that depict the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939. Woolf, as espoused by Sontag has a feminist outlook on war terming it a male enterprise and where men are more attracted to it than women. However, she does not so much as challenge the position taken by Woolf, but rather later lapses into the same use of “we.” The book, even from the title is dedicated to the analysis of the pain of others, and as such, she suggests that neither use of “we” is permissible nor should be taken for granted when one is focusing their attention on pain of others (p. 8). The author makes reference to other scholars in the field of wartime and disaster photography, and researchers on authority sources to present a compelling book. The paper intends to critically examine the assertions made by Ms. Sontag and present her ideology of how photography should be presented, examined and consumed.
For the author, photographs are accessories used towards enhancing memory of events and places. Regarding the Pain of Others is a volume that is dedicated to the things that people do and do not remember as well as a representation of the suffering that people undergo especially in times of war and disaster. Most significantly, she discusses the value of these photographs and the kind of imagery that is portrayed through the on-time capturing of the images. In her view, pictures are archives of ordinary persons that are arranged with visual index cards that initiate a range of private interactions with those who experienced the events with them or those who are enduring their pain through the viewing of the photographs.
The book is her second one to be published and, like the first volume, ‘On Photography,’ published in 1977, there are no pictorial representations of any kind. Critics have debated whether it is an intentional omission on her part or suppression. However, the author is fascinated with the prurient intrusiveness of photography and the manner in which it dislocates reality in a surreal way with a kind of aestheticism that is irrelevant. Images to her do not interest in their actual presentation. Instead, she paraphrases them through description and later explores them to prove their untrustworthiness. Though different people are involved in various events like war and calamities, it is expected that they all experience the same things during those times. Hence, the idea is that the images are a representation of the shared memory that the survivors can look at to share in what they went through.
However, she exposes this ideology by writing, ‘Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as collective memory – part of the same family of spurious notions as collective guilt’ (p. 67). The individual memories of individuals die with them and what is thought to be collective memory is just stipulating by presenting images tending to depict how things happened. In the real sense the people that know what exactly transpired during those times are either dead and cannot tell tales, or are alive and those memories they have about the events are individual and cannot be reproduced in the form of photographs. However, she does believe in an ideology that presents images that can give a generalization of the events. They are the ‘the visual equivalent of sound bites,' that commemorate important historical moments (p. 68). How other people’s undoing, especially violence, is depicted is part of this ideology and is an element of what a society chooses or is programmed to think about. Although the ideology is firmly planted in society, the author believes that it has room for improvement through transcending stipulation and creates a sober moral reflection on the nature of ‘war and other infamies.’
The title of her book has a few meaning of the word ‘regarding’ that is joined by a third, moderate association, that of self-regard. First of all, it is used as a preposition to imply ‘in respect of,’ or ‘with reference to’ the pain of others in discussing photography. Secondly, it is used as a verb in the form of a present participle to meaning paying attention to or contemplating the pain of others through images. The third meaning is bringing to our attention that societies, just like individuals, have the ability to be flattered by the lofty sense of purpose when faced with human misery. This is the discourse that nations take to have the ability to change the manner in which photographs are perceived and consumed. As Sontag writes, ‘The national consensus on American history as a history of progress is a new setting for distressing photographs – one that focuses our attention on wrongs, both here and elsewhere, for which America sees itself as the solution or cure’ (p. 70). Despite the anxieties she expresses, the book, in general, has a positive outlook on the good rather than the harm that photographs can perform when sued appropriately.
In her first book, she concluded with a suggestion that there should be 'an ecology of images,' the censor and perhaps censor the pictorial provocations through which a consumer-oriented culture attacks people.
The author is cognizant of that resounding, helpless demand in Regarding the Pain of Others, and acknowledges that the possibility of that happening is slim. She reiterates that the news outlets are awash with images and footage of calamities happening elsewhere as news, a representation that arouses compassion or anger from the viewer. The manner in which the stories are presented do not give the people they are relayed to the chance to have their perspective without being given direction as the media seem to enjoy disaster and gloat over horror and operate on the principle that 'If it bleeds, it leads'(p. 17).
The media has played a significant role in training the eyes of the viewer to instinctively transform what should be intolerable and unintelligible to some sort of fiction. For example, people that were present when the planes sliced through the Twin Towers at the World Trade center asserted that the scene was unrealistic and seemed like a scene out of a movie. The government in the U.S and others elsewhere caters for the cravings of people that have been grown through imagery on media through the use of blockbusting titles for its wars, such as Operation Desert Storm. The scenarios to be expected in such situations are definitely apocalyptic, but ultimately people are made to believe that they will be harmless, just like the films they see. The truth is that the images have the ability to alter the minds of people and concerning ourselves with the pain of others should be done on an intimate level. Individuals should reflect upon images of disasters and calamities and draw their conclusions on pain of others through their analysis.
However, the author writes that she is ''not so sure'' that ''photographs have a diminishing impact,'' through explaining that ''people don't become inured to what they are shown – if that's the right way to describe what happens – because of the quantity of images dumped on them.''(p. 80). Sympathy should not be selected as the only emotion to be applied to all the images of pain and suffering that are taken during times of war and disasters. The states of apathy or moral anesthesia are full of feelings of rage and frustration that are never given a front row by most media.
Words serve as an antidote to images for the author. This justifies her argument that the war images of photographers like Robert Capa should be in newspapers, where the writers should 'surround them with words'(p. 27), as opposed to being juxtaposed with glossy advertisements in magazines. The explanation of the images in the context of the magazine presentations become a fortification and have the capacity of turning the doubtful viewer into a thoughtful, inquisitive reader. The author blames them for the indiscriminate lust of eyes, claiming 'the appetite for pictures showing bodies in pain is as keen, almost, as the desire for ones that show bodies naked' (p. 33).
Therefore, the book, by being unillustrated, caters to neither hunger nor feed the eyes to their desires. However, her tantalizing description of pictures does nothing short of creating imagery that is as strong as that created through viewing the picture. Her ideology is to have a more in-depth interaction with the image through analysis of what the subjects might be undergoing rather than just scanning through the images as if for enjoyment or just expressing sympathy in every pictorial representation.