ART 227 PHOTOGRAPHY I SUSAN SONTAG: REGARDING THE PAIN OF OTHERS Nonstop imagery (television, streaming video, movies) is our surround, but when it comes to remembering, the photograph has the deeper bite. (p. 20) Conscripted as part of journalism, images were expected to arrest attention, startle, surprise. As the old advertising slogan of Paris Match, founded in 1949, had it: "The weight of words, the shock of photos." The hunt for more dramatic (as they're often described) images drives the photographic enterprise, and is part of the normality of a culture in which shock has become a leading stimulus of consumption and source of value. (p. 20) During the Vietnam era, war photography became, normatively, a criticism of war. This was bound to have consequences: mainstream media are not in the business of making people feel queasy about the struggles for which they are being mobilized, much less of disseminating propaganda against waging war. (p. 52) Throughout history, there has been a fascination with images of war and its consequences. Francisco Goya (1746-1828) famously created the series of 82 prints titled The Disasters of War. With the ascent of photography, and later TV and video, the horrors were depicted realistically, accentuating the cruelty in ways that was not possible before. Repulsion and shock are often our first reaction, but we seem unable to look away. Susan Sontag mentions in her essay that “It seems that the appetite for pictures showing bodies in pain is as keen, almost, as the desire for ones that show bodies naked.” The depiction of violence in movies and video games is becoming more intense and we don’t seem to mind. What shocked us 20 years ago appears so tame now. In her essay, Susan Sontag explores our relationship to images of pain, horrors, and cruelty from a photographic standpoint.

Assignment guidelines and requirements: Use the prepared Word Document for your assignment and send it back with all the guidelines and requirements filled out. At the end of the Word Document, you will find some images for references. Some are made by photographers mentioned in the article, some are iconic photographs that have become part of photo history. Failure to read the article and posting the 3 quotes will be considered an incomplete assignment and graded accordingly (at best a 69). 1. Read Susan Sontag’s essay Regarding the Pain of Others. Although I would encourage you to go through the entire book, I require that you read page 59 to 98 (starting with Chapter 5). 2. Find 3 iconic quotes or paragraphs, and comment on them (page 59 to 98). Make sure to identify on which pages you found them. 3. Answer each of the following questions: - What is this obsession and fascination with the depiction of crime, pain and horrors, bordering on voyeurism? Are we becoming immune to shock or at least being desensitized over time? Do people want to look at horror or even get pleasure out of it? - Has our society become anesthetized by and is apathetic to the horror depicted on a daily basis on TV and in the social media? - Does our incapacity to deal with distant events of horror leave us indifferent when we are not directly affected by them? - Why do people post images of cruelty online for the whole world to see and think they can get away with it? For example, in 2013, two high school football stars from Ohio posted a video on YouTube of the rape of a drugged and unconscious girl. When the crime came to light, it split the town in half between people defending the players and others who wanted them to be prosecuted. - American soldiers photographed the torture and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison, and then passed the images amongst themselves. These pictures seemed to the soldiers nothing more than boys and girls having fun, or as the radio personality Rush Limbaugh said: “You know, these people [the US soldiers] are being fired at every day. I’m talking about people having a good time. You ever heard of emotional release?” What do these images say about empathy, power and humanity? (look at the images of Abu Ghraib)

- What is the role and responsibility of the photographer in taking and disseminating images of war and cruelty? Do they need to censor how and what they photograph? (Look at the images by Susan Meiselas, Robert Capa, Eddie Adams, Nick Ut, James Nachtwey, Ron Haviv, Richard Drew, Kevin Carter, Alan Kurdi) - The great photo journalist Sebastião Salgado has often been accused of producing “spectacular, beautifully composed pictures” of misery that were aesthetically too pleasing to give the subject matter its full weight. Does somebody like him need to forgo his style and create conventional looking photographs? (see Salgado images)

Robert Capa, Death of a loyalist militiaman, Cordoba, Spain, September 1936

Eddie Adams, execution a Viet Cong prisoner, Saigon, Vietnam,1968

Nick Ut, kids running away from a South Vietnamese napalm strike that mistakenly hit their village instead of nearby North Vietnamese troops, 1972

Susan Meiselas, "Cuesta del Plomo", hillside outside Managua, a well-known site of many assassinations carried out by the National Guard, 1981

Richard Drew, Falling Man, World Trade Center, 9.11.2001

Ron Haviv, Serb kicking a Muslim woman who had been shot by Serb forces. Bosnia, 1992

Kevin Carter, Starving Child and Vulture, Sudan,1993

Alan Kurdi, Nilüfer Demir, drowned 3-year-old Syrian refugee, 2015

James Nachtwey, a Hutu man whose face was mutilated by the Hutu militia, who suspected him

of sympathizing with the Tutsi Rebels, Rwanda, 1994

Steubenville (Ohio) Rape, January, 2013

American soldiers photographed the torture and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison, Iraq, 2003

Sebastiao Salgado, Starved Child Looking for Food in the Region of the Former Lake Faguibine, Mali

Sebastiao Salgado, Children's Ward in the Korem Refugee Camp, Ethiopia, 1984

Sebastiao Salgado, draped in blankets to keep out the cold morning wind, refugees wait outside

Korem camp, Ethiopia, 1984

Sebastiao Salgado, blinded by sandstorms and chronic eye infections, this woman is waiting for

food distribution, Mali, 1985