 Cover depicting plate 36 ("Tampoco") fromGoya's seriesThe Disasters of War, 1810–20 | |
| Author | Susan Sontag |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
Publication date | 2003 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 131 |
| ISBN | 978-0-374-24858-1 |
| OCLC | 51446024 |
Regarding the Pain of Others is a 2003 book-length essay by American writerSusan Sontag, which was nominated for theNational Book Critics Circle Award.[1][2] It was her last published book before her death in 2004. Sontag regarded the book as a sequel to her 1977 essay collectionOn Photography and reassessed some of the views she held in the latter.[3] The essay is especially interested inwar photography. Using photography as evidence for her opinions, Sontag sets out to answer one of the three questions posed inVirginia Woolf's bookThree Guineas, "How in your opinion are we to prevent war?"
While challenging a certain number of common ideas concerning images of pain, horror, and atrocity (including some to which she contributed),Regarding the Pain of Others both underscores their importance and undercuts hopes that they can communicate very much. On the one hand, narrative and framing confer upon images most of their meaning, and on the other, Sontag says, those who have not lived through such things "can't understand, can't imagine" the experiences such images represent.[4]
