To suffer is one thing; another thing is living with the photographed images of suffering, which does not necessarily strengthen conscience and the ability to be compassionate. It can also corrupt them. Once one has seen such images, one has started down the road of seeing more - and more. Images transfix. Images anesthetize.
Susan SontagThe principal instances of mass violence in the world today are those committed by governments within their own legally recognized borders.
Susan SontagWhere once it was the physician who waged bellum contra morbum, the war against disease, now it's the whole society.
Susan SontagOne set of messages of the society we live in is: Consume. Grow. Do what you want. Amuse yourselves. The very working of this economic system, which has bestowed these unprecedented liberties, most cherished in the form of physical mobility and material prosperity, depends on encouraging people to defy limits.
Susan SontagTo us, the difference between the #โ photographer as an individual eye and the photographer as an objective recorder seems fundamental, the difference often regarded, mistakenly, as separating photography as art from #โ photography as document. But both are logical extensions of what photography means: note-taking on, potentially, everything in the world, from every possible angle.
Susan Sontag