How should we look at images of horror and suffering?

Takako Isayama, a 12-year-old congenital victim of Minamata disease, with her mother, in Minimata, Japan, 1972. Photo W Eugene Smith and © Aileen Mioko Smith by Joanna Pocock + BIO Takako Isayama, a 12-year-old congenital victim of Minamata disease, with her mother, in Minimata, Japan, 1972. Photo W Eugene Smith and © Aileen Mioko Smith is an Irish-Canadian writer of nonfiction. Her writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Guardian US, The New Statesman and the Nation, among others, and she is the author of Surrender (2019). She lives in London, UK. Edited byMarina Benjamin There is a moment in my life that marks a split between a ‘before’ and an ‘after’. I was around 12 years old, sitting cross-legged on the cream carpet in my family’s living room in Ottawa when I opened a large, heavy book, awkward in my skinny arms. The texture of the paper was strange: it was matt, a word I didn’t know then. The ink was blacker than anything I had seen. A pure void – no light, no reflection,

Takako Isayama, a 12-year-old congenital victim of Minamata disease, with her mother, in Minimata, Japan, 1972. Photo W Eugene Smith and © Aileen Mioko Smith by Joanna Pocock + BIO Takako Isayama, a 12-year-old congenital victim of Minamata disease, with her mother, in Minimata, Japan, 1972. Photo W Eugene Smith and © Aileen Mioko Smith is an Irish-Canadian writer of nonfiction. Her writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Guardian US, The New Statesman and the Nation, among others, and she is the author of Surrender (2019). She lives in London, UK. Edited byMarina Benjamin There is a mo