Susan Sontag

It was in Ferguson, Missouri August 19th 2014. Two teenagers by the names Dorian Johnson and Michael Brown jaywalk across a street in St. Louis a policeman encounters them, Dorian started running as an altercation ensues between Michael Brown and the police officer. BANG. Gunshot goes off and Michael is hit. Eleven more shots ring out of the officer’s gun as a bullet traveled through Michael's right eye, at least six shots fired at him total with the last two shots entering his head as he lay dead in the middle of the street with a pool of blood surrounding, then Darren hover over Michaels' lifeless body to witness what he had done Michael Brown lays in the street in a pool of blood for four hours before being loaded into a suburban and taken
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 can be horrific in nature as to what is actually going on in the photograph. But depending on the setting; time of day, background, or the sky, it can intensify or transform the picture into something much more beautiful than the actual event, and vice versa a photograph such as this essay photograph can look tense, and horrifying due to the setting, time of day, and the obvious police approaching a man with his hands up before they arrest him while the officers guns are aimed in on the man. Two of the best quotes of best text from Sontag in her book to me was "harrowing photographs do not inevitably lose their power to shock. But they are not much help if the task is to understand. Narratives can make us understand. Photographs do something else: they haunt us." and "it seems that the appetite for pictures showing bodies in pain is as keen, almost as the desire for ones that show bodies naked. For many centuries in Christian art, depictions of hell offered both of these elemental satisfaction. On occasion, the pretext might be a biblical decapitation anecdote, or massacre yarn,or some such with the status of a real historical event and of an impeccable fate." One could ask what importance or reasoning does this photograph have, well besides the ongoing stories we continue to hear daily of whit cops killing African Americans, Susan Sontag stated in Regarding The Pain of Others " it's impossible to glance through any newspaper, no matter what the day, the month