As objects of contemplation, images of the atrocious can answer to several different needs. To steel oneself against weakness. To make oneself more numb. To acknowledge the existence of the incorrigible.

The two pioneering forces of modern sensibility are Jewish moral seriousness and homosexual aestheticism and irony.

The particular qualities and intentions of photographs tend to be swallowed up in the generalized pathos of time past.

The work of art itself is . . . a vibrant, magical, and exemplary object which returns us to the world in some way more open and enriched.

People don't become inured to what they are shown - if that's the right way to describe what happens - because of the quantity of images dumped on them. It is passivity that dulls feeling. The states described as apathy, moral or emotional anesthesia, are full of feelings; the feelings are rage and frustration.

So successful has been the camera's role in beautifying the world that photographs, rather than the world, have become the standard of the beautiful.

People robbed of their past seem to make the most fervent picture takers, at home and abroad.