“Shock becomes familiar. Shock fades.” With these words, Susan Sontag deeply analyzes what it means to observe horror from a distance. How do scenes of violence, war, and pain that we see in photographs and videos affect us? Do they help us feel the pain of others, or do they make us increasingly apathetic? We live “in a world where photography serves consumer manipulation,” says Sontag.

In her extremely timely essay, she draws examples from politics and history. She analyzes the political dimension of Goya’s works, documents from the two World Wars, and photographs from Rwanda, Bosnia, Palestine, and the attack on the Twin Towers, demonstrating the enormous power that images exert on us. In Regarding the Pain of Others, Sontag warns us of the responsibility we have as spectators.