Beautiful Suffering: Photography and the Traffic in Pain

Susan Sontag once remarked that since the invention of the camera, photography has "kept company with death." And indeed, images of suffering human beings and devastated landscapes appear regularly in the popular media and even in contemporary art. This volume explores these painful images from the past few decades of photography, weighing in on the intense critical debate that has arisen in recent years around depictions of acute human suffering--especially...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226709507
• ISBN13: 9780226709505
• Release Date: January 2007
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 216 Pages
• Weight: 0.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 10.5" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Food for thought

Although some of the images presented are not photographs in the purest sense, they and the accompanying text should,I feel, give any photographer who has done or attempted this type "photography" pause. Certainly a person can create finely crafted prints of images of ANY subject and I don't think there should be any laws against it. That being said,I,as a photograher,think we should carefully examine our motives when we start to present this type of subject matter. To get back to the book--it's well thought-out, well printed and I would definitely recommend it to a friend.

Great Service and Value

Thanks for the great and quick service. The book was in great condition as promised!