It seems that the appetite for pictures showing bodies in pain is as keen, as the desire for ones that show bodies naked. …(p. 36)
… There was also the repertoire of hard-to-look-at cruelties from classical antiquity …(p. 37)
But there is shame as well as shock in looking at the close-up of a real horror. Perhaps the only people with the right to look at images of suffering of this extreme order are those who could do something to alleviate it - say, the surgeons at the military where the photograph was taken - or those who could learn from it. The rest of us are voyeurs, whether or not we mean to be.
In each instance, the gruesome invites us to be either spectators or cowards, unable to look. Those with the stomach to look are playing a role authorized by many glorious depictions of suffering, Torment, a canonical subject in art, is often represented in painting as a spectacle, something being watched (or ignored) by other people. The implication is: no, it cannot be stopped - and mingling of inattentive with onlookers underscores this. (p. 37.38)
Sontag, Susan. (2003). Regarding the Pain of Others. Penguin Group.
