Goya's Disasters of War






"Let the atrocious images haunt us. Even if they are only tokens, and cannot possibly encompass most of the reality to which they refer; they still perform a vital function.

The images say: This is what human beings are capable of doing--may volunteer to do, enthusiastically, self-righteously. Don't forget.

...Perhaps too much value is assigned to memory, not enough to thinking....Heartlessness and amnesia seem to go together....And too much remembering embitters. To make peace is to forget.

memento mori...would seem to demand the equivalent of a sacred or meditative space in which to look at them."

From "Regarding The Pain of Others" by Susan Sontag