One of the distinguishing features of modern life is that it supplies countless opportunities for regarding (at a distance, through the medium of photography) horrors taking place throughout the world. Images of atrocities have become, via the little screens of the television and the computer, something of a commonplace. But are viewers inured -- or incited -- to violence by the depiction of cruelty? Is the viewer's perception of reality eroded by the daily barrage of such images? What does it mean to care about the sufferings of people in faraway zones of conflict?
Susan Sontag's now classic book On Photography defined the terms of this debate twenty-five years ago. Her new book is a profound rethinking of the intersection of "news" art, and understanding in the contemporary depiction of war and disaster. She makes a fresh appraisal of the arguments about how pictures can inspire dissent, foster violence, or create apathy, evoking a long history of the representation of the pain of others . . .
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p6The temerity of Woolfs version of why War? does not make her revulsion agai...
Everyone is a literalist when it comes to photographs.
The practice of representing atrocious suffering as something to be deplored,...
No we should be taken for granted when the subject is looking at other people...
本来近期没打算看这本书了,因为在网易公开课偶然又看到人提起它,所以还是翻了翻。是在“"Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald,"课程第二节,Wai Chee Dimock谈到三个人和...
泛滥的同情心,和龌龊的满足感,都不丢人,天性使然。 路边儿有个车祸,过路司机减速要多看两眼,如果现场惨烈,车毁人亡尸体还躺在地上,唏嘘拍照发朋友圈者必有之。...
1 No "we" should be taken for granted when the subject is looking at other people's pain. To the militant, identity is everything. In fact, there are many u...