In this reappraisal of the intersection of information, news, art and politics in the contemporary depiction of war and disaster, Susan Sontag, one of the most respected writers in the US, cuts through circular arguments about the role of imagery in contemporary Western culture. Taking up the subject from her 1977 book On Photography, she disusses how pictures can inspire dissent or foster violence. She examines the representation of atrocity from a contemporary viewpoint - from Goya's The Disasters of War, to horrific images of Rwanda, Sarajevo and New York on September 11, 2001 - and challenges our thinking about the uses and meanings of images in our world.