https://poetryontherun.com/2017/12/20/a-sermon-regarding-hunger/
I was offered pictures of a starving baby. Yes an actual baby, a fellow human starving to death…
or I could look at pictures of Prince
or I could look at pictures of some jackass actor putting on a mask
Of course I have the option to look elsewhere for photographs,
but I will never unsee that starving baby, ever…
Will I let it change me?
Poetry on the run 
It is frightful what google can put in front of you if you’re not careful.
One must be extremely particular about search terms.
Susan Sontag would have much to say about whether it will change you or not.
After enough times, the fact is, the only change in any of us will be and is a growing callous of the optic nerve.
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re: Susan Sontag, can you point me in the right direction?
I am thinning that callous everyday that I refuse to click on gruesome or “reality” pictures. I think that’s why this one is bothering me so much.
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The first couple of essays in her book, “On Photography.” (snappy title, huh?)
It’s been on my reading list for years. Finally got it from the library recently but only got the first two essays read before I had to return it.
I’ve decided it’s one I need to own.
A great and timely book, despite it being about thirty–er-forty–years old. She was writing about print photography, the persistent presence of “the photographic image” and what it is doing (has done) to our concepts of the world around us. I can only imagine what she would say about digital media/the internet.
She died in ’04. Don’t know too much about her except that I dig her and I think you would dig her too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Sontag
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This book is considered a bit of a must-read I guess, in art criticism/philosophy circles.
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Yep :o)!
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Yet another reason why I left facebook.
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The world already has plenty of ways to deaden me.
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It will change you. You decide how. Yes, that sometimes seems hard. But I think, that’s why world and some kind of empathy still exist.
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Wrong: it has already changed you.
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Yes it has already changed me. Now I ask myself – what am I going to do about it?
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