About the Suffering of Others (Su Ceng. Susan Sontag Collection)

Author: Susan Sontag [USA]
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-06-01
Features: This book is Susan Sontag's second work on photography after On Photography, and also her last published work during her lifetime. It focuses on war photography, exploring the relationship between the suffering reflected in images and the viewers. Horrific images, though they may evoke the viewers' compassion, only make these images, which permeate daily life yet seem alien and absurd, more redundant and nonsensical. If we blindly believe the content of images without reflection, our moral judgment will only weaken. Sontag writes about images in pure text, providing viewers with space to confront "the suffering of others." Susan Sontag was born in New York, USA, in 1933. She graduated from the University of Chicago and later pursued graduate studies at Harvard University and Oxford University, studying philosophy, literature, and theology. In the 1980s, Sontag served as the director of the International P.E.N. Club. In 1993, she was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The planned works for the "Sontag Collected Works" include Against Interpretation, Illness as Metaphor, Where the Stress Lies, The Forms of Radical Will, Under the Sign of Saturn, and Regarding the Pain of Others. Among these, Against Interpretation and Illness as Metaphor have been published by Shanghai Translation Publishing House, while Where the Stress Lies and Regarding the Pain of Others were scheduled to be released before Susan Sontag's visit to China in May 2004. Under the Sign of Saturn and The Forms of Radical Will were published in October 2004.