Susan Sontag- Regarding the Pain of Others

In Susan Sontag's "Regarding The Pain of Others", through no visual aids and nothing but her words, she talks about war and the perceptions put upon it by people. She talks about the artistic nature of war and how something as violent as war and something as peaceful as art can be put together to convey strong emotions in people's hearts. But currently the emotions people get from war are non-existent. An over saturation of a product will dull the interest in it, and art helps bring that meaning, that emotion back into play.

“To the militant, identity is everything.”

Susan Sontag uses this line in order to explain how a picture can only be explained through its caption and as long as you have the caption that best fits your narrative you will also have no problem getting your audience to believe that narrative. Exactly like the Serbs and Croats did during the Balkan wars, with the photographs of the of the children who were killed during the shelling of a village. Both sides used it as propaganda against the other in order to influence their people.

“Narratives make us understand. Photographs do something else: they haunt us.” 

Susan uses this quote to show how photography can enlist more emotion through the pictures than just words. She is trying to say, that, like victims haunted by a traumatic situation photography brings that trauma into light without having the viewer experience the damage first hand but still getting a grasp on the situation and strong emotional ties from the photo. Which is exactly what happens when I see a photography of the devastation of war placed upon people and where they live, even though they are on the other side of the world. 

“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 that extent, it can be (for all our good intentions) an impertinent- if not inappropriate- response. 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 might prefer not to imagine- be linked to their suffering, as the wealth as some may imply the destitution of others, is a task for which the painful, stirring images supply only an initial spark.”  

To me this is one of Susan's strongest quotes because it not only shows that she understands fully well what an image does to a person rather than just words, but she talks about it so vividly and passionately that it had me wanting to go out now an take pictures of some type of disaster or sorrow laid upon in my neighborhood so when I talk about it I can have my pictures along with my words to better help people see where I'm coming from.

I really enjoyed reading Regarding the Pain of Others because it shines a light on why photography and art in general are important when words are not enough to describe a horrible situation. It gets people's heart raising and their blood boiling, really making you want to get up and do something about the situation no matter how far away you are from the situation. Something words cant do alone.