to take a photograph is to participate in another person's mortality, vulnerability, mutability. precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it… - Susan Sontag

I have loved people passionately whom I wouldn't have slept with for anything, but I think that's something else. That's friendship — love, which can be a tremendously passionate emotion, and it can be tender and involve a desire to hug or whatever. But it certainly doesn't mean you want to take off your clothes with that person. But certain friendships can be erotic. Oh, I think friendship is very erotic, but it isn't necessarily sexual. I think all my relationships are erotic: I can't imagine being fond of somebody I don't want to touch or hug, so therefore there's always an erotic aspect to some extent.

But if we consider what emotions would be desirable [in response to the suffering of others], it seems too simple to elect sympathy.

An erotic life is, for more and more people, that which can be captured on digital photographs and on video. And perhaps the torture is more attractive, as something to record, when it has a sexual component.