Regarding the Pain of Others, by Susan Sontag In Regarding the Pain of Others, Susan Sontag asks the reader to think about how our engagement with a photograph affects our understanding of suffering and war. Sontag evaluates the use of images and the role of photography in representing how the interpretation of images is heavily influenced by context, and the effect that these representations have on us. In doing so, Sontag addresses a few major questions concerning photography. What is unique…
Though Sontag speaks and disagrees with the form of interpretation of art that can be invoked as a stereotype for art critics/interpreters in the modern world today, Aristotle's representational view of art battles that notion and challenges the view of, whether imitational art is a art form in itself, or just simply the product of the egos that critics possess in hopes of polishing their appearances as an connoisseur of finding the latent contents in artworks. In “Against Interpretation” Sontag…
Article Summary Sontag, Susan. “Regarding the Pain of Others”. Caroline Shrodes, et.al, Eds. The Conscious Reader. Boston: Longman P. 2012. In Sontags article she is trying to explain why we humans are so interested in pain or violence being brought upon other people to where we find it as being somewhat amusing and are aroused by this occurrence. When we encounter an event of pain and suffering we tend to keep watching and hope the event furthers instead of just looking away. The viewing…
‘To live is to be photographed’ (Sontag, 2004). Does photography have a special role in the mediation of our lives, and how, according to Sontag, is this role changing? INTRODUCTION Attempting to comprehend the role of photography in the mediation of our lives would have to account, apart from historical evidence, an understanding of the importance and the necessity of the photograph in every day life. In a society that is constantly bombarded by images from different mediums…
Photography shows us the world, but only the world the photographer creates. According to Sontag, photos show that we understand through a photo in the way we see the picture. Seeing photos can limit our understanding because we only see the picture not whats going on around it. In other words the viewer only sees what’s within the frame. Images allowed us to see situations that occurred; however, it is extremely limited in what the audience can see. I qualify Sontag’s claim that photography limits…
Susan Sontag an author Regarding The Pain of Others and of four novels, and seven non-fiction books. States that "Photographs tend to transform, whatever their subject; and as an image something may be beautiful - or terrifying, or unbearable, or quite bearable - as it is not real life." These words spoken by Susan Sontag explain almost every aspect that goes into evaluating a photograph. For instance a picture…
Susan Sontag, in "Against Interpretation," takes a very interesting critical standpoint on the idea of literary interpretation. Unlike most literary critics, Sontag believes that literary criticism is growing increasingly destructive towards the very works of art that they, supposedly, so greatly "appreciate" and "respect." Her standpoint could not be more accurate. Reading her work generates numerous questions, the most important of which is quite possibly, "How are we to take her final statement…
were assumed to be what we now have to call--lamely, enviously--whole person…..beauty would be matched by beauty of the other kind” -here she explains how theirs two types of beauty the “inside” beauty and the “outside” beauty. In Susan Sontag informative piece entitled “Beauty” she discusses her logical thoughts of the beauty of a women and a men, and of how beauty has changed over the centuries. Susan uses Logical appeals to evoke her philosophy of beauty. She says “The privileges of…
1.2 The major literary works of Susan Sontag In Sontag’s life, she totally wrote four novels, they are "The Benefactor” (1963), “Death Tool"(1967),"The Volcano Lover"(1992) and "In the United States" (2000);besides, there is one short stories “I , etcetera" and a few scripts. Then she also published eight other works, among these works , the famous works are "Against Interpretation" (1966), "The Radical Form of Will" (1969), "On Photography" (1977), "The Disease Metaphor" (1988), "The point" (2001)…
sentence like: “Even the mom and pop photographers”, and further emphasizing by generalizing his own opinion and applying his own theory to the whole world by stating: “world would be a better place if all of the image makers in this county read a little Sontag”, illustrating clearly that he based his description on this own opinion…