REGARDING THE PAIN OF OTHERS

Atrocities and Armchair Observations

In 1977 Susan Sontag solidified her reputation with "On Photography," a collection of six essays that had seen their first light in the New York Review of Books. "On Photography" didn't pin itself down to any particular aspect of the art form it examined. And although they tended toward the broad, provocative claims that have frustrated her critics, the essays in "On Photography" more often advanced specific, tightly-argued claims. Whether she was vividly dissecting the work of Diane Arbus, or making her trademark broad aesthetic claims (a picture has a way of making an event more and less real; pictures make us tourist-consumers of other people's experiences), Sontag remained grounded in her subject and her insights. Time has not dated "On Photography." Its essays seem as fresh today as they must have when they first appeared.

Twenty-five years later Sontag has circled back to photography, but this time with a grander ambition, a tighter frame on her subject, and, paradoxically, less to say. The subject of "Regarding the Pain of Others" is "atrocity photography," that species of picture-taking whose subject is the death or misery of other people. The book was, of course, penned in the shadow of September 11, and it seems, unfortunately, to bear a slightly burdensome responsibility to say Important Things. I would venture to say that "On Photography" will be remembered as the more important book.

Sontag begins with Virginia Woolf's epistolary essay Three Guineas, in which Woolf argues, through a letter to an off-stage correspondent, that photographs of the atrocities of war, in their depiction of the misery wrought by armed conflict, inevitably unite people of good will in the cause of pacifism. Sontag wants to argue the opposing case -- that there is no ready constituency for the consensus for peace that war photographs might create; that such photographs as often make ready propaganda tools for perpetuating conflict; that modern life supplies, in Sontag's eloquent prose, "innumerable opportunities for regarding -- at a distance, through the medium of photography -- other people's pain."

But isn't the observation that gruesome photographs don't always provoke a kindred sympathy -- that they can as easily serve as promotional tools for the perpetuation of conflict -- a fairly obvious point? Throughout "Regarding the Pain of Others" Sontag's arguments seem to fall prey to her decision to present them at an abstract level, where it's harder to find traction for a lasting claim, and easier, perhaps, to knock down straw men. Was Woolf really claiming that any photograph of an atrocity inevitably makes devoted pacifists of its viewers? Or was she, perhaps, arguing that this is how such photographs should be seen -- that the sympathy they are capable of inspiring in any viewer is what we should see in them?

In any case there is just as much evidence for Woolf's claim as there is for Sontag's. The trick, of course, is that it takes more skill to render a war photograph that reveals the humanity in its subject -- one that can't be so easily transformed into cliched propaganda. But there are such photographs. I would cite the work of Ami Vitale, who currently reports from Kashmir for Getty Images, and the photographs that Ruth Fremson and Tyler Hicks sent back from Iraq for the New York Times. One suspects that the work of these photographers would force Sontag to retreat somewhat from her repudiation of Woolf's supposed claim -- to acknowledge that there are, in fact, chasms photography can bridge, conventions that photographs, by themselves, can challenge.

But, again, Sontag is in a bit of a bind. Such a claim -- that war photographs don't necessarily unite their viewers in sympathy -- isn't worth making unless it applies universally, but of course on a universal level it can't be defended. To make it interesting, perhaps, one has to get down to cases, and not try too hard to look beyond them. Which is precisely what "On Photography" did so well.

And so it goes throughout "Regarding the Pain of Others." The essays -- which are shorter, breezier, and less grounded than those in "On Photography" -- raise more questions than they answer, stir up more problems than they put to rest. Reading the book is like floating through a sea of ideas. There are brilliant observations that go by the boards -- Sontag's brief mention, for example, of photography's inherent qualities of objectivity and subjectivity, and the unique responsibility of artist to subject that separates photography from more fictionalized art forms such as painting -- and there are observations that, upon reflection, merely baffle -- her claim, for example, that amateur photographs are more "authentic" than professional images. "Authentic" in what sense? Doesn't it, in the end, depend on the photograph, how it is rendered and what it depicts?

One might argue that Sontag is writing anti-essay essays; that these are Sontag's answer to Montaigne's teachings that one eventually views the mountain by catching small glimpses, or that one reaches the summit through a series of connected and calculated steps. Such a view would be appropriate to the information age, and consistent with the unfathomable horrors of our time.

But that seems too easy an out. In "On Photography" Sontag argued, brilliantly, that photographs, through their immediacy, make events more real to us, while our repeated viewings of the same photographs make reality less real. Now, she says, she is not so sure, and argues that because, in the end, images of atrocities in foreign lands do not lose their ability to shock us, maybe photographs don't dilute reality after all. I think Sontag had it right the first time. There is a specific sense in which particular events become less real as, over time, the event itself gets replaced in the collective consciousness with the visual depiction of the event. In this case, as in many others, "On Photography" seemed to hold the tighter line.

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Sean Carman is an environmental lawyer, and an occasional freelance journalist and writer.

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