A reflection on art and war inspired by Susan Sontag’s “Regarding the Pain of Others”
When I picked up Susan Sontag’s book Regarding the Pain of Others in 2022, I didn’t know it would change my life. Like many moments in life, we often aren’t aware it’s a life changing one until it’s over. This book took me three months to finish after collecting dust on my bookshelf for two years. However, after finishing the book I knew that I had transformed into a new version of myself. This book not only reignited my passion to write, but also gave me the courage to share. If you take anything from this page please let it be this book recommendation.
From October 7th 2023 to September 2024, over 42,000 Palestinians have lost their lives in a merciless war in Gaza (Aljazeera.com). Since then major news outlets, social media, and the western zeitgeist has been flooded with photographs, statistics, opinions, and outrage on both sides of the action happening between Israel and Hamas. This isn’t the first or last global issue to flood my consciousness, but it is the one that coincides with my reading of Sontag’s book.
Finding myself stuck in the loop of wanting to be informed, hatred for my fellow humans, pity for my fellow humans, the feeling of helplessness and stepping back for my own “mental health“ I kept coming back to Sontag‘s notes on art. The way art moves us to action. The equilibrium of emotion and change that brings progress in stagnation. She not only asked what art does for us, but what we can do with our own art.
“…for a long time, some people believed that if horror could be made vivid enough, most people would finally take the outrageousness, the insanity of war” (page 14)
Sontag’s first book, On Photography, bravely asks why war must be photographed? How photographs can illustrate as well as corroborate the stories we hold in our lineage. She argues that events known through photographs become more real, yet repeated exposure then makes it less real. Photography, staged or not, is so real to the human conscious it is as close as we can get without living it ourselves. And yet, when Samar Abu Elouf captures the moment a seven-year-old Khaled Joudeh sobs over his baby sister Misq dead body, does that influence Senators in Washington DC to stop sending missiles to Israel? Depends. Are those who suffer black or brown? What religion do they practice? How much do they donate to a political party? Can they get those senators reelected?
