What do you see beyond the viewfinder? Death, apparently.
It’s almost complete coincidence I picked this nonfiction. I was just done reading Watanare, which is a fiction, so I picked nonfiction next, and my eyes just went to this book, and I was like, hey. Why not? I don’t know the synopsis or tags or whatever the book is about, beyond the author and the title.
It’s certainly heavier read than Watanare. What is it about? Well, it’s about photography, and death. Specifically: war.
There’s a certain thoughtline Sontag’s weaved on this book. First is about the evolution of depiction of war and death; going from painting and sculpting, and diorama, to photography. Why before camera, such thing is more symbolized, a representation of what could be true, rather than what is. While camera, in all such realness, is considered real. It’s considered something that actually happened.
But this is of course wrong. Not in the sense the picture taken by camera doesn’t happened; they do. But it could be staged - and since early camera takes a long time to make picture, it is almost certain to be staged. But more importantly: what is not on camera? What is not captured? That too is important.
In all such realness, we can feel the pain of others, too. But it can caused compassion fatigue, which isn’t stated in the book in that term - but that’s how I’ll describe it. So, is it worth to witness it?
Sontag argue that yeah, there’s some worth to it. Such pain after all caused all kind of action, for better or worse. And- well, these things have happened. It might not be nearby. But someone will need to know it happened.
But in 2026…
… There’s this pervasive sense of helplessness that boosted by witnessing such things, and not being able - or willing - to act. And I’ve heard case of people that, not being able to act and just witness, keep on seeing these horrific picture over and over again. And that’s, obviously, bad.
But isn’t that the point? You’ll keep on feeling bad. Until you can do something about it. Something more concrete than just witnessing.