It was hard for me to read this book while not around a computer as I am tempted to google every image Sontag discusses. I think the lack of imagery in this book really detracts from her argument and I wonder why a book written mainly to discuss art does not include representations of the art in it.

I noticed that she mentions Sarajevo a lot and I was a little embarrassed to admit that I didn’t know much about what went on in Sarajevo prior to enlightening myself on wikipedia. The material was dense. I had to re-read often to grasp the ideas. It was also hard to visualize what she was explaining and not see the photograph. Being a photographer myself, I can relate to much of what she says. I loved the part when she described a Sarajevan man yelling at a photographer. "Are you waiting for a shell to go off so you can photograph some corpses?" It’s funny to me because it borders immoral. Photographing desolation in foreign countries makes for good pictures, success, money, and victory in the job field. But while in the process of trying to retrieve a good picture does the photographer forget that they are exploiting their fellow man?

This book explores a lot of the same concepts as another book I’m reading called "Ways of Seeing" by John Berger. They both mention how reproductions and the creation of the camera have desensitized the human race. People now aspire to become images. In a way reality has been abdicated and there are only representations: media. I like this quote from the book: "It seems that the appetite for pictures showing bodies in pain is as keen, almost, as the desire for ones that show bodies naked." Berger talks about that too. Sex sells and if it bleeds it leads.

While reading I came up with an idea to solve this problem. Would outlawing the nightly news show be a solution for desensitizing horror? Imagine news was banned from TV in the way that cigarette commercials are. People would certainly be allowed access to news online and in Newspapers but video footage would not be allowed on television. Banning it from webcast would just make it a taboo that someone would capitalize on. But if news was banned from TV wouldn’t it create the necessity for only actual information and eliminate competition over ratings, and lessen painful imagery?

I think it’s funny that the book addresses the fundamental question but still can’t answer it. Why do we take/look at pictures of pain? "To make us feel ‘bad’; that is, to appall and sadden? To help us mourn? Are we the better for seeing these images? Do they actually teach us anything? Don’t they rather just confirm what we already know (or want to know)?" I don’t know if anyone can answer that question. The best explanation I think we’ve ever come up with is that old adage "if it bleeds it leads". I also think Sontag raised an interesting point when she mentioned the Holocaust Museum in America and how there is no slavery museum honoring the dead of that tragedy. America can touch the issue of Holocaust because it didn’t happen here but slavery is a topic that’s still too close for comfort therefore we’d better just ignore it for another hundred years until we forget about that mistake.