Susan Sontag on War, Photography, and Suffering in New Book

Susan Sontag, recent recipient of the Peace Prize at the Frankfurt Book Fair, discusses her new book "Regarding the Pain of Others" (Christian Bourgois). The work reexamines her earlier positions in "On Photography" (1979), particularly the idea that war photographs numb compassion. Sontag clarifies the new book is not a sequel but a counter-shot, starting from reality rather than the image, informed by her experiences in Sarajevo and a second bout with cancer. She argues that documentary images are more easily manipulated than staged works like Jeff Wall's theatrical photograph of Soviet soldiers. Sontag defends her critique of Jean Baudrillard and Guy Debord, stating she is a student of Debord but rejects Baudrillard's claim that reality has dissolved into images. She recounts a 1969 anecdote in Morocco where villagers watching the moon landing on TV did not believe it was real. The book also engages with Virginia Woolf and Goya, and Sontag reveals plans for a future book on illness, a subjective counterpoint to "Illness as Metaphor."