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Regarding the Pain of Others is a 2003 book-length essay by American writer Susan Sontag, which was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award. It was her last published book before her death in 2004. Sontag regarded the book as a sequel to her 1977 essay collection On Photography and reassessed some of the views she held in the latter.[1] The essay is especially interested in war photography.

The book discusses how images of war and suffering shape our perception of reality. Sontag argues that photographs often distort or aestheticise violence, turning real suffering into something distant, consumable, or even voyeuristic. Rather than deepening understanding, repeated exposure to such images can dull emotional response and encourage a detached, spectator-like attitude. In contrast, Sontag suggests that words, not images, may better foster reflection and empathy.

Contents

Regarding the Pain of Others explores the ethical and emotional complexities of viewing photographs depicting suffering. Unlike her previous book On Photography, this work contains no images, reflecting her skepticism about photography’s ability to truthfully represent reality. Sontag critiques how media and society consume images of pain—often desensitized, treating horrors as distant spectacles rather than urgent human tragedies.[2]

While challenging a certain number of common ideas concerning images of pain, horror, and atrocity, Regarding the Pain of Others both underscores their importance and undercuts hopes that they can communicate very much. On the one hand, narrative and framing confer upon images most of their meaning, and on the other, Sontag says, those who have not lived through such things “can’t understand, can’t imagine” the experiences such images represent.[3]

Using photography as evidence for her opinions, Sontag sets out to answer a question first posed in Virginia Woolf‘s 1938 book Three Guineas, “How in your opinion are we to prevent war?”[4]: 1  While Woolf had reflected on the causes of war, the role of gender and society, and the importance of maintaining a sense of shared humanity in the face of conflict, Sontag shifts the focus to the role of photography and visual representation in shaping the public perception of war. Echoing Woolf’s use of the word we, Sontag asserts her conviction that the effect of photographs of war and suffering is shaped by the viewer’s intellectual and emotional reaction, as she stated: “No “we” should be taken for granted when the subject is looking at other people’s pain.[4]: 4 

Sontag discusses both historical and contemporary examples where photographs were staged or manipulated, such as Roger Fenton’s sanitized Crimean War images or the iconic, but partially staged and edited Red Flag over the Reichstag. Further, she recalls well-known documentary images of human suffering, including those of emaciated inmates in Buchenwald concentration camp, the Spanish Civil war, the Vietnam War, the September 11 attacks of the World Trade Center or dead bodies in Jenin refugee camp.[4]: 7–8 

Sontag argues that such images, while powerful, risk becoming mere aesthetic objects, stripped of their moral weight when shown in galleries or magazines. Rather, she proposes that such powerful images should be experienced privately, not as part of a casual gallery visit. Ultimately, she places greater trust in language than in images, suggesting that words can provide context and encourage reflection in ways pictures alone cannot.[4]: 5–32 [2]

Reception

Regarding the Pain of Others was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award.[5] The essay received both wide appreciation as well as criticism in public media[6] and academic scholarship.[7][8][9][10][11] It was translated into several languages, including French,[12] German,[13], Spanish[14] Korean,[15] Chinese[16] and Armenian.[17]

In his review for The Guardian, Peter Conrad portrayed the book as a serious but limited meditation on how modern media turns distant suffering into something we observe rather than truly comprehend. On a critical note, the reviewer is sceptical of some of Sontag’s claims. He doubts that images are as easily turned into political symbols as she suggests and finds her argument repetitive and insufficiently supported by examples, especially since the book itself contains no photographs. He mentions, however, the sole photograph on the inside back flap of the U.S. edition – a flattering portrait of Sontag herself taken by Annie Leibovitz – as a contradiction between her arguments and her own vanity. The reviewer concludes by critiquing the book’s brevity.[2]

A commentary in the Kirkus Reviews appreciated some of Sontag’s statements such as “All memory is individual, unreproducible – it dies with each person.” “To remember is, more and more, not to recall a story but to be able to call up a picture.” and “Narratives can make us understand. Photographs do something else: they haunt us.” In general, however, it called Sontag’s discussion “only imperfectly satisfying” and summarized the essay as “Moments of brilliance and wonder amid the generally disappointing.”[18]

John Leonard‘s review in The New York Times offered both appreciation and criticism of Sontag’s essay. Leonard praised Sontag’s intellectual rigor and her “usual archaeology” in tracing the history of war photography from Roger Fenton to the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge. He highlighted her ability to provoke thought about the ethical and moral dimensions of viewing such suffering and her call to move beyond passive consumption of images to active questioning of their causes and responsibilities. On the critical side, Leonard implied that Sontag’s tone can be combative and her arguments sometimes sweeping, as she “loses her temper” and dismissed certain theoretical perspectives, like those of Guy Debord and Jean Baudrillard, as “merely impudent” in the face of real suffering.[5]

Editions

See also

References

  1. ^ Moser, Benjamin (2019). Sontag: Her Life and Work. New York: Ecco. pp. 594–95. ISBN 978-0062896407.
  2. ^ a b c Conrad, Peter (2003-08-02). “What the eye can’t see…” The Observer.
  3. ^ Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (New York: Picador/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003), 126.
  4. ^ a b c d Sontag, Susan (2019). Regarding the pain of others. London: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-101237-7.
  5. ^ a b Leonard, John (March 23, 2003). “Not What Happened but Why”. The New York Times.
  6. ^ “Regarding the Pain of Others”. The MIT Press Bookstore. 2025-07-08. Retrieved 2026-04-15.
  7. ^ Bielby, Clare; Davies, Mererid Puw (2024). Violence Elsewhere. Boydell & Brewer. pp. 38–39. ISBN 978-1-64014-137-7.
  8. ^ Kennedy, Liam; Patrick, Caitlin (2020-09-13). The Violence of the Image: Photography and International Conflict. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-000-21340-9.
  9. ^ Hinerman, Nate; Sutton, Matthew Lewis (2020-10-12). On Suffering: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue on Narrative and Suffering. BRILL. pp. 74–75. ISBN 978-90-04-39917-4.
  10. ^ Zucconi, Francesco (2022-03-17). “Regarding the Image of the Pain of Others: Caravaggio, Sontag, Leogrande”. Humanities. 11 (2). MDPI AG: 44. doi:10.3390/h11020044. ISSN 2076-0787.
  11. ^ Nance, Kimberly A. (2019). Ethics of witness in global testimonial narratives: Responding to the pain of others. Reading trauma and memory. Lanham Boulder New York: Lexington Books. ISBN 978-1-4985-9889-7.
  12. ^ Sontag, Susan; Durand-Bogaert, Fabienne (2003). Devant la douleur des autres. Paris: C. Bourgois. ISBN 978-2-267-01694-9.
  13. ^ Sontag, Susan (2022). Das Leiden anderer betrachten. Fischer-Taschenbücher. Translated by Kaiser, Reinhard (6. Auflage ed.). Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch. ISBN 978-3-596-16480-6.
  14. ^ Sontag, Susan (2004). Ante el dolor de los demás. Círculo de Lectores. ISBN 9788467202922.
  15. ^ Sontag, Susan (2004). 타인의고통 / Regarding the pain of others / Susan Sontag / T’ain ŭi kot’ong / Regarding the pain of others (in Korean). Seoul: 이후. ISBN 9788988105726.
  16. ^ Sontag, Susan (2022). 旁觀他人之痛苦 = Regarding the pain of others (in Chinese). 四版. 臺北市: 麥田出版. ISBN 9786263102682. OCLC 1535059686.
  17. ^ Sontag, Susan (2022). Urishneri ts’avin hayelis (in Armenian). Yerevan: Hayastani Amerikyan Hamalsarani hratarakch’ut’yun. ISBN 9789939114316.
  18. ^ “Regarding the Pain of Others. Moments of brilliance and wonder amid the generally disappointing”. Kirkus Reviews. 2005-03-15.

Further reading