Observing the pain of others

"Observing the Pain of Others" is an essay by the American critic and writer Susan Sontag, which was published as a separate book in February 2003, a month before the US army invaded Iraq. Sontag continues Virginia Woolf's interwar reflections on the nature of war and raises the question of photography's ability to prevent violence: if photography makes visible the horrors in all its detail, can it end wars or, conversely, lead to a just war?

Observing the Pain of Others is also a revision of Sontag's own thesis from On Photography (1977). In the flood of so many other images replicated in the news, do events become real to viewers from other countries? Does the excess of pictures risk remaining a normalized indoor spectacle? In the essay, Sontag inscribes photography into the history of the iconography of suffering, reflects on the perception and vulnerability of the gaze, photography and death, photography and memories of war — collective and individual.

The book continues a new series of ist publishing, which presents interdisciplinary studies about war and culture — warning books.