Regarding the Pain of Others

Regarding the Pain of Others (2003) was Susan Sontag's last published book before her death in 2004. It is a follow-up to her classic collection of essays On Photography, published 26 years earlier (and recently released in Russian as part of the Garage publishing program in collaboration with Ad Marginem Press). In Regarding the Pain of Others, Sontag explores visual representations of war and violence in today's culture - from Goya's The Disasters of War to photographs of the American Civil War and contemporary horrific images of the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Israel, and Palestine - asking a series of questions: What is the purpose of showing the atrocities of war? How does the spectacle of the sufferings of others in the media affect us? Are we inured to violence by the depiction of cruelty?