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2024, “On the Outside Looking In?”
If the structural virtuosity of this photograph is not immediately apparent, it’s probably because we’re overcome by its content. After all, it’s hard not to wince when looking at Diane’s face. But look again and you’ll notice that she’s staring at it, too, and she’s surely wincing as well. Obviously, her pain came first, and undoubtedly lasted longer. Okay, but now what do we do?
In Susan Sontag’s seminal work, On Photography, she claimed that a paradox arises from making images of human suffering: On the one hand they can make distant suffering “real,” on the other hand, a consequence of living in an image saturated world is that they eventually make us less empathetic. She later came to question this assertion. Should she have?