From the BBC this morning, an hour’s meditation on the nature, practice and moral questions regarding war photography: Regarding the Pain of Others
In her 2003 essay Regarding the Pain of Others, Susan Sontag grappled with this question. War photographs, Sontag believed, confront us with our simultaneous need to look and to turn away. Yet for Sontag, most people could never understand what war is like. ‘We don’t get it’, she wrote.
Allan Little knew Sontag and here takes up the mantle. He has spent decades reporting in conflict zones from Bosnia to Sierra Leone. As a young reporter he believed, in his own words, in ‘the power of witness’. Now he’s not so sure. What purpose do war reports or images serve? Why do they seem to make little or no difference?
See also the first chapter of Susan Sontag’s ‘Regarding the Pain of Others.’
…plus a review thereof.
On a related tip: Pain Empathy and ‘I Feel Your Pain’:The Neuroscience of Empathy