Regarding the Pain of Others- Response

In the book, Regarding the Pain of Others, by Susan Sontag, the ideas of photography and war are discussed. One of the main points Sontag discusses is the idea of looking at a photo and trying to comprehend what is taking place, “One can feel obliged to look at photographs that record great cruelties and crimes. One should feel obliged to think about what it means to look at them…” She explains that we will never fully understand, "We don't get it. We truly can't imagine what it was like. We can't imagine how dreadful, how terrifying war is war is; and how normal it becomes." The point she also makes is that we should not forget what these images are trying to convey, "The images say: This is what human beings are capable of doing- may volunteer to do, enthusiastically, self-righteously. Don't forget."

I believe that Sontag also wants people to use photos as a means of understanding that what we see as deplorable may photograph as beauty and that the camera has the power to highlight important features, physical and not physical, that cannot be seen by the human eye. Sontag states,“That a gory battlescape could be beautiful—in the sublime or awesome or tragic register of the beautiful—is a commonplace about images of war made my artists. The idea does not sit well when applied to images taken by cameras: to find beauty in war photographs seems heartless. But the landscape of devastation is still a landscape. There is beauty in ruins. " I believe that this is a key element in why it is hard to look away from these war photographs and even other horrible photos, that under the lens of the camera there is beauty, it is just hard to see when one is in the situation.