"..violence turns anybody subjected to it into a thing."

Those words from Susan Sontag's book Regarding the Pain of Others have stuck with me all week. It makes me shudder thinking how true they are. Violence does not recognize a person or a thing it just recognizes the havoc and pain it can reap upon an individual, a community or even a country. Those words I don't think will ever leave my head they just ring through out. As I read the rest of the book those words played through again and again and again. I found that I had to go and reread that chapter just so that those words would never disappear from my memory. The question of , "Why?", still rings through my head as well. I am still working on that.

Susan brings up a good point about war photographs and how it forces the common public to recognize and observe the autrocities that are occuring. It forces an individual to recognize that these things are in fact a reality and not just some rumor floating across the expanses of ocean that separate our country from the next. Why does a person need to see these things to recognized them as truth? Do we believe that human beings are completely incapable of doing such terrible things to eachother? The obvious answer is that we don't because the news, magazines, etc are flooded with the horrible occurences of an average day. Yet, words mean nothing compared to a picture. Its as though we need that image to solidify and validate the words. "A picture is worth a thousand words" this is so true, but the most remembered pictures are the ones that render the viewer speechless.

Pictures are a crucial part of memory. This was even played out in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind each person had to remove every object that reminded them of the memory they were trying to erase. These items are like pictures they hold a memory for a person. Pictures however provide more evidence of such a memory then it does a just a reminder. Victims of wars and of other such autrocities rely on pictures because it is a validation of sorts. It tells them and the rest of the world that yes, these horrible things did happen. No one wants to admit it but these pictures are the visual proof of the pain and anguish of the experience.

Censorship is an issue with photography and Sontag does an excellent job discussing this. We want to be able to see so much and yet there is so much in photography that can be editted and ommited in order to make it appropriate for the public at large. Is this okay? Does it take away from the effectiveness of a picture if you take away some of the blood and hide some of the gore. The answer is yes and it is also no. It is a testament that there are things that most people can not fully handle seeing and it understandable that they wish to hide it. It is also no because the graphicness of these photos are the reality. When they are "prettied" up there is so much taken away. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then I guess autrocity falls under the same scrutiny.

What I don't understand why we don't have a picture museum of American Slavery. We as a country are obligated to feel ashamed for the actions that were committed by out forefathers. Yet, we are more willing to recognized the horrible deeds of another country then we are our own. We are so afraid of admitting that we are not the moral superiors to the rest of the world. Our country has a record as well of committing the good, the bad and the ugly. The ancestors of those enslaved have a right to see a place where there are images validating the fact that their people were in fact subjugated. They have a right to make the public uncomfortable as a means of a reminder and as a hope of a prevention of a repeat of that occurence.

We say the public has become desensitized to violence and bloodshed, but we haven't. We have just become more habituated to its presence. By censoring these images or by refusing to show them is evidence that we are not desensitized, in fact we are terrified of these images. We are afraid of what it will do to our children and to loved ones alike. We are even afraid of what seeing these images could do to ourselves. What we forget is to take the we out of that thought process and think of the them and the others. The ones who are the subjects of these images. We forget that there are people in the images and that aren't just "things".

After reading this book I had to surf google images. I pulled up the napalm picture, the atomic bomb pictures, agent orange, lynching, September 11, and the list goes on. I sat horrified and sick to my stomach but I made myself look. Why, I am not quite sure, but I know I felt compelled to see. I guess I need my own validation or proof that we are, as human beings, capable of doing these horrible things.