The Cruel Radiance: Photography and Political Violence (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780226482507)

In The Cruel Radiance, Susie Linfield challenges the idea that photographs of political violence exploit their subjects and pander to the voyeuristic tendencies of their viewers. Instead she argues passionately that looking at such images--and learning to see the people in them--is an ethically and politically necessary act that connects us to our modern history of violence and probes the human capacity for cruelty. Grappling with critics from Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht to Susan Sontag and the postmoderns--and analyzing photographs from such events as the Holocaust, China's Cultural Revolution, and recent terrorist acts--Linfield explores the complex connection between photojournalism and the rise of human rights ideals. In the book's concluding section, she examines the indispensable work of Robert Capa, James Nachtwey, and Gilles Peress and asks how photography should respond to the increasingly nihilistic trajectory of modern warfare.A bracing and unsettling book, The Cruel Radiance convincingly demonstrates that if we hope to alleviate political violence, we must first truly understand it--and to do that, we must begin to look.

Author: Susie Linfield
ISBN-10: 0226482502
ISBN-13: 9780226482507
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Language: English
Published: 11/01/2010
Pages: 344
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.54lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.26w x 1.13d
Award: National Book Critics Circle Award - Finalist
Award: PROSE - Honorable Mention

Review Citation(s):
Choice 05/01/2011
Library Journal 10/15/2010 pg. 86
Chronicle of Higher Education 11/12/2010 pg. 18