Susan Sontag What Have We Done Analysis

In this essay, I will examine the role of contemporary art practice in presenting the world in an altered light so that we engage in the represented events and situations in more critical and perhaps experimental ways. In addressing this question, I shall concentrate on politically engaged artistic practice in the form of photography, street art, and installation art. It is the artistic techniques that these artists behold and present to us that makes us react and respond to them and what they are representing. For example Banksy’s inclusion of the QR code in his mural “Teargas at Calais”, which successfully made the artwork both immensely powerful in in its message, and also interactive, as one could simply scan the code on their smartphones …show more content…
She explains in depth her thoughts on the infamous prison of Saddam Hussein, Abu Ghraib, and the raw and graphic photographs that were published from the war in Iraq. These pictures graphically depicted prisoners being abused, both sexually and physically by American soldiers who proudly stood beside their prisoners, smiling, notoriously proud of themselves. The administration was only shocked that these photographs had been published, and the photographs themselves, failing to grasp what the photographs were actually depicting and showing to the nation, the horrific abuse and torture of the prisoners at the American’s disposal. Also the fact that these photographs were even taken by the perpetrators were actually proud of their actions, pictured posing beside their prisoners, treating son As Sontag emphasized in her book “Regarding the Pain of Others,” “the horror of what is shown in the photographs cannot be separated from the horror that the photographs were