Images of incessant and graphic violence are taking over our lives. The violence is real, as well as our impotence to intervene. The title of this Winter issue, Failures of Influence, comes from Uzomaka Maduka’s Critic Dispatch, in which the American author considers the failures of influence in friendship and art. What still influences us today? Can images incite us to action? Are we empathy deficient? Are we living in a time of post-empathy?

We used to feel compassion for those lost in battle. We once found significance in thumbnail-sized images of wars, or even drawings depicting political assassinations or weapons of mass destruction. Now, we are so saturated with tragic, brutal imagery that we are almost numb to it. We are falling out of love with reality. We live in mentally dysfunctional times, when opinions are shaped via social media rather than first-hand experience or objective reasoning. Everyone has something to say about everything and anything. The artists selected for this issue addresses these failures of influence, particularly our evolving — and devolving — relationship with the image in these troubled political times.