Regarding the Pain of Others
by Susan Sontag · first published 2002
45% recommend55% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Sontag's essay on photographs of war and suffering, looking at how images shape what audiences feel and understand about distant violence; suited to readers interested in visual culture and media.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Twenty-five years after her classic On Photography, Susan Sontag returns to the subject of visual representations of war and violence in our culture today. How does the spectacle of the sufferings of others (via television or newsprint) affect us? Are viewers inured--or incited--to violence by the depiction of cruelty? In Regarding the Pain of Others, Susan Sontag takes a fresh look at the representation of atrocity--from Goya's The Disasters of War to photographs of the American Civil War, lynchings of blacks in the South, and the Nazi death camps, to contemporary horrific images of Bosnia
Affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
Related books
2012–2026On Photography
Susan Sontag
Recommended by 12 · mentioned by 1812 recommend · 18 mention12 recommend · 1812 recommend
Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
Walter Benjamin
Recommended by 15 · mentioned by 2915 recommend · 29 mention15 recommend · 2915 recommend
I'd recommend the book Regarding the Pain of Others by Susan Sontag, read it a while ago, but still relevant, perhaps even more now...
on “Twitter hides Donald Trump tweet for “glorifying violence”” ↗Simply "seeing" the "misery" of war is easier eaid than done, although you're right that it's done more deliberately outside the reach of the warring parties. A primer on this subject is Sontag's "Regarding the Pain of Others". https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52373.Regarding_the_Pain...
on “ICANN's rejection of Ukraine's request to sever Russia from the internet [pdf]” ↗Two books have summed it up for me perfectly over the decades: Susan Sontag -- Regarding the Pain of Others Naomi Klein -- The Shock Doctrine https://www.amazon.com/Regarding-Pain-Others-Susan-Sontag/dp... https://www.amazon.com/Shock-Doctrine-Rise-Disaster-Capitali...
on “Why is press freedom declining around the world?” ↗It sounds like you've been reading Susan Sontag. For others, I recommend: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Photography - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regarding_the_Pain_of_Others
on “Nano Banana 2: Google's latest AI image generation model” ↗She wrote a lot of valuable stuff about American visual culture at a time when television was dominant and just before the rise of the internet. Someone else cited On Photography, and Regarding the Pain of Others is another good one.
on “The Slave of Seriousness” ↗I can't help but think of Susan Sontag's book, "Regarding the Pain of Others": 'A citizen of Sarajevo, a woman of impeccable adherence to the Yugoslav ideal, whom I met soon after arriving in the city the first time in April 1993, told me: "In October 1991 I was here in my nice…
on “Beirut, Also the Site of Deadly Attacks, Feels Forgotten” ↗…of Twitter, and other text. Photographs don't, to my thinking, convey much information. Instead, perhaps, they inspire recollection. They are a cool medium, and I think Susan Sontag's theory in e.g. "Regarding the Pain of Others" reflects this. If the image can be _used_ by politically cynical agents to achieve polar-opposite propaganda goals, then what information does the image inherently carry? Little. > Cool sensory perception…
on “The Audio Revolution” ↗> In her essay Regarding the Pain of Others, on images of violence and suffering, Susan Sontag famously asks: “What is the point of exhibiting these pictures? To awaken indignation? To make us feel ‘bad,’ that is, to appall and sadden? To help…
on “Hard to See: How trauma became synonymous with authenticity” ↗If you are interested in images' role in public perception of events--particularly suffering and tragedy--you might look to read Susan Sontag's essay collection "Regarding the Pain of Others," published in 2003: > To the militant, identity is everything. And all photographs wait to be explained or falsified by their captions. During the fighting between Serbs and Croats at the beginning…
on “The past is not true” ↗…school shootings, the sorrow in the faces of refugees as they flee their county’s with nowhere to go, and all of this happening while our political structure crumbles. Susan Sontag wrote about this in "Regarding the pain of others". Basically as soon as we had the means to know what is happening around the world almost instantly (at least as soon as the information is properly formatted) we opened this exposure to the collective…
on “Memes and mental health: How teens are coping with increasing stress” ↗…Broadly, what both parent and child have implicitly or explicitly agreed upon the time of their separation. 20. Is one’s life more than the sum of one’s days? No. 21. Has photography deepened empathy ‘regarding the pain of others’ (SUSAN SONTAG)? Yes. As a single example, war journalism might as well have not existed prior to the invention of photography. 22. Can there be freedom without rules? There is unbounded negative freedom…
on “Oxford All Souls College General Examination [pdf]” ↗> > Sontag > We are not talking about professional photographers here I think Sontag wrote essays which are collected in the 1977 book "On Photography" (and a followup in 2003, "Regarding the Pain of Others"). It's not specifically about professional photography, but about photography in general--family vacation pictures, crime scene photos, etc. I like the essays because they provide some crucial insights…
on “Classic 50mm “Normal” Lens” ↗apropos. Regarding the Pain of Others, by Susan Sonntag
on “'Tranq tourism': alarm in Philadelphia as TikTokers travel to film drug users” ↗