Ariella Azoulay teaches visual culture and contemporary philosophy at the Program for Culture and Interpretation, Bar Ilan University. She is the author of Once Upon A Time: Photography Following Walter Benjamin and Death's Showcase: The Power of Image in Contemporary Democracy (MIT Press, 2001).

"Azoulay's ethical and political interrogation of her circumstances as an Israeli citizen should be taken as a challenge to produce our own accounting."---Abigail Solomon-Godeau, Art in America

"[T]his is a significant, deeply moral book that should undercut complacent thinking. Azoulay's renewal of cultural attention to the state and her view of photography that requires us to dispute prevailing interpretations of evidence must surely be welcomed as we are, once again, thrown headlong back to reality."---Steve Edwards, Times Higher Education Supplement

"Azoulay...is not interested in viewers' emotional responses to images of suffering. It's not empathy she's after; she wants action. Images can transform the world, she argues, and the only reason they haven't yet is because we don't know how to look at them. The problem isn't images; it's us....For many years, I said I didn't know what to do when I encountered an image of another person in pain or dying or already dead. After reading Azoulay, I could no longer claim that I didn't know what to do. She had explained the work in detail. The question for me now is whether I am up to the task."---Sarah Sentilles, The New Yorker