"We, and this is all that we
That has never experienced anything like that suffered by them-
not understand . We have no thought "
Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of other .
Siglo XXI: image, reaction, assimilation.
I heard the echo in the adjectives re Pedro Piqueras, (caricatured to the core, which made me laugh a lot), usually used to describe the most dire situations usually see on the news. "Catastrophic", "horrifying", "shocking."
But last March 11, millions of people view images that could well serve those adjectives. We received a lot of images and footage of the devastating effect of this phenomenon. It was inevitable that they provoke some kind of emotion, very small it was, in those who saw them. We can see but not understand
"What did you do to help?" That's what I asked Kevin Carter, South African photographer, after receiving the Pulitzer Prize for a dramatic photograph made in a Sudanese village in 1993 that shows a girl with visible signs of malnutrition being stalked by a vulture.
is certainly a case to discuss in many ways inside and outside the world of journalism (a debate which, however, has not emerged in all that I race, even in the course photojournalism).
After a long time to barrage of criticism, adding all the personal conflicts that may have Carter, committed suicide in 1994. Parting
theories that have emerged since the implementation of the photograph and rumors about the journalist's life, it seems that this question predicted it could cause an awakening. I mean that kind of awakening that is often experienced when, for too long, have suffered a state of blindness or emotional anesthesia. As a war correspondent, Kevin Carter had caught too many scenes with his camera, so hard to traumatize a person for the rest of his life. What emerges over time when one observes the conditions of this office from the outside (as a student in this case) is that it concludes that one must be a lesser or greater degree desensitized to keep sending to the world images such aberrant like the girl. You have to be "automated" to know the significance that will capture an image when the opportunity arises. And if there are loopholes in ethics, think about whether it will change the circumstances of the worst situations, if not there, it will be only successful project with ambition to win a Pulitzer.
In this study, Regarding the pain of others , Susan Sontag makes a reasoned, thought-provoking, eloquent and really needed on the effect of photography as an illustrator document the devastation of war. Goes even further. Study the new reality in which we are about it: Eat a large dose of violence and witness, third degree, armed conflict and distress experienced by millions of people worldwide. And we can watch everything through the media and this is a fact that inevitably changes our perception of things and emotions that we may cause. Sontag recreates scenes of many battles have been given on Earth. From the battles of the Crimea and the Civil War to the treatment of images of the World Trade Center through the wars in Chechnya, Bosnia, Kosovo, Sudan, Rwanda. The First and Second World War are two historical passages where the author stops to reflect on more than one occasion. "The knowledge of the war between people who have never lived is now mainly a product of the impact of these images" is one of the most accurate statements of Sontag and her attempts to explain in truth we can never imagine how living through a war.
its 9 chapters in the book leads to a series of proposals that essentially are based on the nature of man to understand or not the pain of others.
In the first part, the author introduces the bold question, by Virginia Woolf's words, that it is men who wage war. Subsequent chapters highlight the important role that has had the photograph (image) in the propaganda battle every war, meeting with special relevance for the English Civil War and the echo that the photograph of the Robert Capa Republican activist's death. It also presents some examples from history where an event has no significance due because of the lack of photographic or low capacity dramatic images available.
"The problem is not that people remember through photographs, the problem is that people only remember the pictures." Undoubtedly, Sontag creates a special way, without obvious exhortations, or judgments or prejudices, Key points to think about all the features and consequences of the images.
Regarding the pain of others is ultimately an essay about the emotions they evoke images of pain and a necessary approach: Do they keep the pictures of wars, famine, injustice, etc. causing a commotion?
On the one hand, it is inevitable that human being used to bear the images of pain, if it is possible to adapt to psychological and physical, of course it would be for the pain of others. However, you may get used only if we can be alert for a while. If we close our eyes and enter into that state of "emotional anesthesia" previously cited. Kevin Carter, someone allegedly tanned and desensitized to continue in his job, it came time to see the "pain of others" and his own. There will always be images that make us wake up and change, intentionally or not, our behavior.
Another idea full of truth that Sontag uses is that even we feel fear, anger, compassion for others after seeing the picture or sequence of a war scene, we will never feel what the people who live single skin experience. "We" are the audience.
Finally, a more extensive quotation: "We can not imagine how awful, how frightening it is war, and how it becomes normal." It's what every soldier, every journalist, aid worker and independent observer who has spent time under fire, and was lucky to escape death, stubbornly feels .. He is right. "
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