Apart from Pain; an Ethical Retirement; Wealthy Wastrels

Images have been reproached for being a way of watching suffering at a distance, as if there were some other way of watching. But watching up close -- without the mediation of an image -- is still just watching.

Some of the reproaches made against images of atrocity are not different from characterizations of sight itself. Sight is effortless; sight requires spatial distance; sight can be turned off (we have lids on our eyes, we do not have doors on our ears). The very