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It's to the best of our knowledge. I'm Anne Strange Champs. Today, regarding the pain of others.

One of the best war photographers in the world, Anya Niedringhaus, was shot and killed in Afghanistan

recently, and in the wake of her death, we're thinking about the courage of photographers

who risk their lives to cover war war and about the power of the photographs

they take. Why do they take them and why do we look at them? The late Susan Sontag thought about

that question for much of her life. Steve Paulson talked with her about one of her last and most

famous essays called Regarding the Pain of Others. It's the one in which she asks, does war photography prevent or encourage war?

All war photography is susceptible, available to being used for organizing against war.

But I don't think it has to have that impact at all because I think in certain

context you see these images as look at the terrible things the enemy is doing to us, we must

fight even harder to repel the enemy. I think to a Palestinian looking at images of the

destruction of the center of the refugee camp in Janine.

These are not anti-war images. These are images which promote militancy.

In your book, you point out that many of the classic war photographs over the decades were actually staged.

I mean, going back to Matthew Brady during the Civil War,

a lot of those pictures of dead bodies were, the bodies were rearranged to make them look

especially graphic, I guess you could say. And other classic photos were staged as well. The American

soldiers planning the flag at Ewo Jima. That was a recreation of an actual event.

Well, you know, I think that the understanding of photography almost from the beginning was that it was something that was posed.

To begin with, it was because exposure time was quite lengthy by our standards.

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