ABSTRACT
Why would it be helpful, culturally, hence, socially, to “image” pain? Generally speaking, it is my view that representing pain entails tenacious problems—of voyeurism, of facile equations, of caricature, of the potential for sadistic viewing and masochistic identification, and an erasing generalization. Becoming inured to the shocking effect of such images through their frequent display in the media entails perhaps the worst of these ills: indifference. The problems are so damaging that I can only condone images with a clear and politically powerful potential of cultural change—and those are not easy to find, or to make. 1
