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Believing is Seeing: Observations on the Mysteries of Photography
Selected by The New York Times Book Review as a Notable Book of the Year Academy Award-wining filmmaker Errol Morris investigates the hidden truths behind a series of documentary photographs.
In Believing Is Seeing Academy Award-winning director Errol Morris turns his eye to the nature of truth in photography. In his inimitable style, Morris untangles the mysteries behind an eclectic range of documentary photographs, from the ambrotype of three children found clasped in the hands of an unknown soldier at Gettysburg to the indelible portraits of the WPA photography project. Each essay in the book presents the reader with a conundrum and investigates the relationship between photographs and the real world they supposedly record.
During the Crimean War, Roger Fenton took two nearly identical photographs of the Valley of the Shadow of Death-one of a road covered with cannonballs, the other of the same road without cannonballs. Susan Sontag later claimed that Fenton posed the first photograph, prompting Morris to return to Crimea to investigate. Can we recover the truth behind Fenton's intentions in a photograph taken 150 years ago?
In the midst of the Great Depression and one of the worst droughts on record, FDR's Farm Service Administration sent several photographers, including Arthur Rothstein, Dorothea Lange, and Walker Evans, to document rural poverty. When Rothstein was discovered to have moved the cow skull in his now-iconic photograph, fiscal conservatives-furious over taxpayer money funding an artistic project-claimed the photographs were liberal propaganda. What is the difference between journalistic evidence, fine art, and staged propaganda?
During the Israeli-Lebanese war in 2006, no fewer than four different photojournalists took photographs in Beirut of toys lying in the rubble of bombings, provoking accusations of posing and anti-Israeli bias at the news organizations. Why were there so many similar photographs? And were the accusers objecting to the photos themselves or to the conclusions readers drew from them?
With his keen sense of irony, skepticism, and humor, Morris reveals in these and many other investigations how photographs can obscure as much as they reveal and how what we see is often determined by our beliefs. Part detective story, part philosophical meditation, Believing Is Seeing is a highly original exploration of photography and perception from one of America's most provocative observers.
In Believing Is Seeing Academy Award-winning director Errol Morris turns his eye to the nature of truth in photography. In his inimitable style, Morris untangles the mysteries behind an eclectic range of documentary photographs, from the ambrotype of three children found clasped in the hands of an unknown soldier at Gettysburg to the indelible portraits of the WPA photography project. Each essay in the book presents the reader with a conundrum and investigates the relationship between photographs and the real world they supposedly record.
During the Crimean War, Roger Fenton took two nearly identical photographs of the Valley of the Shadow of Death-one of a road covered with cannonballs, the other of the same road without cannonballs. Susan Sontag later claimed that Fenton posed the first photograph, prompting Morris to return to Crimea to investigate. Can we recover the truth behind Fenton's intentions in a photograph taken 150 years ago?
In the midst of the Great Depression and one of the worst droughts on record, FDR's Farm Service Administration sent several photographers, including Arthur Rothstein, Dorothea Lange, and Walker Evans, to document rural poverty. When Rothstein was discovered to have moved the cow skull in his now-iconic photograph, fiscal conservatives-furious over taxpayer money funding an artistic project-claimed the photographs were liberal propaganda. What is the difference between journalistic evidence, fine art, and staged propaganda?
During the Israeli-Lebanese war in 2006, no fewer than four different photojournalists took photographs in Beirut of toys lying in the rubble of bombings, provoking accusations of posing and anti-Israeli bias at the news organizations. Why were there so many similar photographs? And were the accusers objecting to the photos themselves or to the conclusions readers drew from them?
With his keen sense of irony, skepticism, and humor, Morris reveals in these and many other investigations how photographs can obscure as much as they reveal and how what we see is often determined by our beliefs. Part detective story, part philosophical meditation, Believing Is Seeing is a highly original exploration of photography and perception from one of America's most provocative observers.
310 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 2011
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October 10, 2011"I, too, look at the two Fenton photographs and try to imagine what Fenton's intentions might have been. It's unavoidable. People have been programmed to do so by natural selection - to project ourselves into the world - and to imagine Fenton's world as we imagine ours. We want to know where we end and the world begins. We want to know where that line is. It's the deepest problem of epistemology.
"All of the central issues of photography that I address in this book of essays - questions of posing, photo fakery, reading the intention of the photographer from the image itself, questions about what a photograph means and how it relates to the world it photographs - are contained these twin Fenton photographs." [pg. 37]
"Photographs attract false beliefs the way flypaper attracts flies. Why my skepticism? Because vision is privileged in our society and our sensorium. We trust it; we place our confidence in it. Photography allows us to uncritically think. We IMAGINE that photographs provide a magic path to the truth.
"What's more, photographs allow us to think we know more than we really do. We can imagine a context that isn't really there. In the pre-photographic era, images came directly from our eyes to our brains and were part of our experience of reality. With the advent of photography, images were torn free from the world, snatched from the fabric of reality, and enshrined as separate entities. They became more like dreams. It is no wonder that we really don't know how to deal with them.
"....
"....What we see is not independent of our beliefs. Photographs provide evidence, but no shortcut to reality. It is often said that seeing is believing. But we do not form our beliefs on the basis of what we see; rather, what we see is often determined by our beliefs. Believing is seeing, not the other way around." [pp. 92, 93]
"All of the central issues of photography that I address in this book of essays - questions of posing, photo fakery, reading the intention of the photographer from the image itself, questions about what a photograph means and how it relates to the world it photographs - are contained these twin Fenton photographs." [pg. 37]
"Photographs attract false beliefs the way flypaper attracts flies. Why my skepticism? Because vision is privileged in our society and our sensorium. We trust it; we place our confidence in it. Photography allows us to uncritically think. We IMAGINE that photographs provide a magic path to the truth.
"What's more, photographs allow us to think we know more than we really do. We can imagine a context that isn't really there. In the pre-photographic era, images came directly from our eyes to our brains and were part of our experience of reality. With the advent of photography, images were torn free from the world, snatched from the fabric of reality, and enshrined as separate entities. They became more like dreams. It is no wonder that we really don't know how to deal with them.
"....
"....What we see is not independent of our beliefs. Photographs provide evidence, but no shortcut to reality. It is often said that seeing is believing. But we do not form our beliefs on the basis of what we see; rather, what we see is often determined by our beliefs. Believing is seeing, not the other way around." [pp. 92, 93]
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October 25, 2011Errol Morris shows how the meaning of photographs shifts when the context in which they're viewed shifts. As a contextualist, I found this an exciting (if not surprising) demonstration. Each essay is an exercise in changing the context of famous photographs. Fenton's In the Valley of the Shadow of Death changes from a document of the horrors of war into a way of exposing interpretive hubris and the limits of knowledge. The snapshots of torture taken by MPs in Abu Ghraib become forensic data in the reconstruction of an unprosecuted murder likely perpetrated by OGAs ("other governmental agencies"--i.e., the CIA). The best essay in the book, on allegations of manipulation in famous photographs taken by FSA photographers Walker Evans and Arthur Rothstein, directly addresses the issue of the context of photographs, and shows an incredible photo following up on the subject of Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother, that photographs her with her daughters in a suburban backyard in the 1970s. It becomes impossible to see the famous original as a self-contained unit of significance (about hardship, despair, or resolve, say), rather than a brief slice of a much more complex life.
The idea that changing what you know about a photograph changes its meaning is hardly radical, but Morris illustrates the idea so convincingly that you can feel your attitude towards iconic photos changing, and it makes more concrete what the "meaning" of a photograph might be in the first place.
The idea that changing what you know about a photograph changes its meaning is hardly radical, but Morris illustrates the idea so convincingly that you can feel your attitude towards iconic photos changing, and it makes more concrete what the "meaning" of a photograph might be in the first place.
February 24, 2012
The essays, while very readable, address photos and how they are perceived more than it addressed "photography". Morris provides a broad range of analyses of various historical photos, places them in context with the social/psychological issues they address and covers a huge amount of time and technique. My review is necessarily superficial, as I did not find this collection of essays particularly compelling.
May 3, 2020
To put it bluntly - I thought I was going to get alot more out of this
November 24, 2012
i really loved this book - it engaged me, it made me think and most of all, it made me long for someone to discuss it with - it made me want a photography book club in my life. because it warrants discussion and debate. it made me so much more aware of the emotions and intentions that we bring to any photograph - how much of the story of a photograph happens inside of our own heads.
the highlights, for me, were definitely chapter 1 - on two photos of a crimean war battlefield taken by photographer roger fenton in 1855 and chapter 4 - on whether (and to what purpose) certain photos by FSA photographers arthur rothstein and walker evans were staged.
before reading this book, all i really knew about the crimean war was from tolstoy's sebastapol sketches (after reading it, i've got to go reread that). fenton took two photos of a valley the soldiers had dubbed "the valley of the shadow of death" - both feature a lot of cannonballs, but in one photo, they are strewn out on the road and in one, the road has been cleared. the question of the chapter is whether and to what purpose fenton moved the cannonballs. it prompted a lively discussion in my own household when i showed the photos to my husband, who was in the army for 18 years. i blogged about that here: http://www.julochka.com/2012/11/still..., so i won't reproduce the discussion in this review. but suffice it to say, he brought out another angle on the sequence of the photos that i don't think errol morris considered.
interestingly, morris was prompted to investigate the fenton photos and even GO TO the crimea and try to find the spot (he succeeds) because of a passage in susan sontag's regarding the pain of others (which i now also have to read). what's interesting is that she didn't reproduce the photo in her book, so he became curious about it solely due to the words she wrote - which i find a fascinating illumination of the question of words vs. photos. he sums it up very well in chapter 2: "photography presents things and at the same time hides things from our view, and the coupling of photography and language provides an express train to error." (p. 85) - it is this he explores in the book as a whole. "photographs provide evidence, but no shortcut to reality. it is often said that seeing is believing. but we do not form our beliefs on the basis of what we see, rather, what we see is often determined by our beliefs. believing is seeing, not the other way around." (p. 93)
some of the highlights from the fenton chapter:
"war is such a peculiar thing - inaugurated by the whims of few, affecting the fate of many. it is a difficult, if not impossible, thing ot understand, yet we feel compelled to describe it as though it has meaning-even virtue. it starts for reasons often hopelessly obscure, meanders on, then stops." (p. 30)
"photographs provide an alternative way of looking into history. not into general history--but into a specific moment, a specific place. it is as if we have reached into the past and created a tiny peephole." (p. 31)
"..the crimean war is the "perfect war." it was started for obscure reasons, was hopelessly murderous, and accomplished nothing." (p. 36)
"a war defined by innovations in wardrobe--a sleeve, a sweater, and a hat." (p. 36)
"but to navigate in the world--to read the world, so to speak--we need to see the world has having some sort of purpose, some sort of motivation. (it is too frightening otherwise.) hence, we see intentionality everywhere." (p. 36)
"we want to know where we end and the world begins. we want to know where that line is. it's the deepest problem of epistemology." (p. 37)
a central question of the book:
"illegitimate? are there really legitimate and illegitimate reasons for altering a scene?" (p. 52)
"once you change the scene, you cease to simply be an observer." (p. 54)
and another:
"are you saying that to interpret a picture we need more than the picture itself? we need context?" (p. 54)
"the problem with the scientific side of it is that the photographer was not a neutral observer. he picked the best picture he could find." (p. 54)
"with so many variables (haze, clouds, emulsion), how can one ever determine whether the shadows reflect real shadows or some artifact of the photographic process? it was an epistemic shadow." (p. 55)
i think i fell a little bit in love when i read this:
"there is something deeply unsettling about the thought that all the evidence might depend on a print. which print? why one print over another? if all the prints are different, where is reality? how can the real world be recovered from the simulacrum?" (p.55)
and finally, he asked the question that had been lurking in my mind:
"posing is not necessarily deception. deception is deception." (p. 56)
quoting helmut gernsheim:
"neither camera, nor lens, nor film determine the quality of pictures, it is the visual perception of the man behind the mechanism which brings them to live." (p. 57)
"is it unnatural to have people move cannonballs? or inauthentic? aren't these photographs of human events--even if there are no people in the frame. they are photographs about war. the effects of war. is war itself natural or authentic? the concepts of naturalness, authenticity, and posing are all slippery slopes that when carefully examined become hopelessly vague." (p. 58)
dennis purcell on examining a photo taken by morris' team 150 years later and finding some of the same stones:
"how many things in the world have changed so little in one hundred and fifty years? how in the world, where there's so much information, can there be such a high level of ignorance? certainly the more information we get, the higher the level of ignorance seems to be." (p. 62)
"couldn't you argue that every photograph is posed because every photograph excludes something? even in framing and cropping? someone has made a decision..." (p. 65)
"he posed the photograph, but ho would you know? the photograph is not posed by the presence of the elephant but by its absence. isn't something always excluded, an elephant or something else? isn't there always a possible elephant lurking just at the edge of the frame?
this is precisely what i love so much about this book:
"by thinking about the fenton photographs we are essentially thinking about some of the most vexing issues in photography--about posing, about the intentions of the photographer, about the nature of photographic evidence--about the relationship between photographs and reality." (p. 67)
"photographs preserve information. they record data. they present evidence. not because of our intentions but often in spite of them." (p. 69)
quoting roy flukinger:
"there's a whole other level that reaches a person through the eyes....photography has a certain immediacy--not only in the taking, but also at the end of the equation, the presenting of the image to a viewer."
my other favorite chapter is chapter 4, where he spends a lot of time talking about arthur rothstein's photo of a horned cow skull on the dry, cracked ground of pennington county in western south dakota. rothstein took a series of shots of the skull, which was found there in the environment, moving it around to get the most advantageous light and shadows. he admitted that he moved the skull, but there was great controversy surrounding it - as if he had done so to make the drought look even worse. in my view, he moved the skull as any photographer would, to get the best shadows and the most drama from the shot - the question gets sticky when you consider whether it was documentary or art photography, as it would seem more honest as art to take liberties with the scene.
the chapter also discusses walker evans shots of a sharecropper's cabin and whether the small portable alarm clock on the mantlepiece belonged to the dirt poor gudgers or not. in a shot of a room that otherwise seems staged and moved around to accomodate tripods and get the best light, does it matter? again, a question of documentary vs. artistic. (tho' admittedly walker's mission was quite clearly documentary.) he was accompanied by writer james agee at the shoot and it's from agee's careful list that the question of the clock arises, as it's not on it. "there's this idea of capturing reality in words--as if his prose was in competition with evans's camera" (p. 155) - that maybe the most interesting question of all and again gets back to a central premise of the book - the intersection between photo and word - and whether one can be more true than the other?
interesting quotes from the chapter:
"our lives are partially defined by ephemera-address books, bus tickets, campaign buttons. a trail of detritus. but do we have the right bits of detritus--the right evidence--to answer the question?" (p. 146)
"agee wrestles with the idea of capturing reality." (p. 152)
"agee is constantly wrestling with memory and with a dark sense of intrusion." (p. 153) (i would ask, who isn't? all. the. time.)
"if there is an element of posing in all pictures, why should be praise evans and condemn rothstein." (p. 156)
"it's all part of a photographer's arsenal. framing, film emulsion, f-stop, focal length, etc., etc." (p. 159)
"one thing that evans is famous for saying is what matters in photography isn't the camera, it's your eye. it's seeing what's beautiful." (p. 163)
"he (evans) was always in favor of waiting thirty years with photographs. he said after thirty years you will know what you have there." (p. 164) (this is very interesting!!)
"but the minute you take one picture as opposed to another, or the minute you select one photograph from a group of photographs, you are doing something very, very similar to manipulating reality." (p. 164)
"she (dorthea lange) had a feeling that you wanted to present things so that the immediacy of now was not shockingly visible." (p. 164) (also very interesting to ponder).
"the whole act of creating a photograph is an act of cropping reality. the 'secondary' cropping where you take the negative and you pick some area that you like for the photograph is secondary to the first act, which is the act of tearing an image from the fabric of reality." (p. 165) (bold emphasis is mine.)
i find this question to be more connect to the nature of memory that morris goes into:
"photographs concern belief, not truth." (p. 170)
and more on pictures vs. words, quoting rothstein:
"just as the photograph in its visual sincerity may influence the view, so does the printed word carry the power of persuasion." (p. 172) "the lesson to be learned is that photographer must be aware of and concerned about the words that accompany a picture. these words should be considered ascarefully as the lighting, exposure and composition of the photograph." (p. 173)
and on his "fleeing a dust storm" photo:
"it's a picture that went through a kind of evolutionary process all by itself. it has a life of its own." (p. 173)
there's an interesting section in the chapter about re-photography: where contemporary photographers go out to find the people in famous photos (dorthea lange's migrant woman and the little boy from rothstein's dust bowl photo. the photo of the migrant woman and her daughters taken in 1979 vs. the original from 1936 actually spoils the original photo for me - she was so beautiful somehow in the original shot by lange and in the one 43 years later, she is mundane and ordinary and even rather ugly. i actually wish i hadn't seen it. the same isn't true for me of the little boy from the dust bowl and his older self in his living room - maybe because he's more attractive, but also because of the painting of his famous photo on the wall behind him. morris asks bill ganzel, who did the re-photography project:
M: would you describe your project as an attempt to get inside of a photograph?
G: i would say it slightly differently. i would say "go behind the photograph" or "extend the photograph."
M: to put it in history, to uncover an unseen context?
G: absolutely. (p. 184)
"the more famous a photograph becomes, the more likely people are to find fault with it or to question its 'authenticity'...photographs may be taken but we are also taken in by them." (p. 184)
"a photograph can capture a patch of reality, but it can also leave a strange footprint: an impression of an instantly lost past around which memories collect." (p. 185)
"eternally trapped in the present, we are doomed to perpetually walk 'in front' of the past." (185)
so very powerful:
"it is not just that day that is captured in the photograph. it is how he has come to see his childhood. and how we have come to see an entire era. it rings time forward, but also compresses it, collapses it into one moment. it is the idea that the photograph captures that endures." (p. 185)
and the last interesting bit i want to share is in the mickey mouse chapter - a photo of a lonely child's toy in the rubble after a bombing in lebanon and whether it was staged or moved, like rothstein's skull. the photographer, ben curtis, explains how many factors go into a shot...the photograph is wandering around a whole day, hoping to get some usable shots (ones with what he calls "narrative compression" - which tell a story in one shot, he's got heavy camera bags around his waist, two cameras and not necessarily the perfect lens in place. it's the end of the day, it's getting dark and he spots the toy on the ground - he should have had a wide angle lens, but didn't, and it was too dusty to stop to and change when he might not be able to get his camera cleaned in the near future, so he takes the shot as it comes. there are so many factors surrounding the circumstances of a shot. the possibilities are nearly endless, but also very limiting.
i highly recommend this book and hope errol morris writes another, with a whole new set of intriguing photographs.
the highlights, for me, were definitely chapter 1 - on two photos of a crimean war battlefield taken by photographer roger fenton in 1855 and chapter 4 - on whether (and to what purpose) certain photos by FSA photographers arthur rothstein and walker evans were staged.
before reading this book, all i really knew about the crimean war was from tolstoy's sebastapol sketches (after reading it, i've got to go reread that). fenton took two photos of a valley the soldiers had dubbed "the valley of the shadow of death" - both feature a lot of cannonballs, but in one photo, they are strewn out on the road and in one, the road has been cleared. the question of the chapter is whether and to what purpose fenton moved the cannonballs. it prompted a lively discussion in my own household when i showed the photos to my husband, who was in the army for 18 years. i blogged about that here: http://www.julochka.com/2012/11/still..., so i won't reproduce the discussion in this review. but suffice it to say, he brought out another angle on the sequence of the photos that i don't think errol morris considered.
interestingly, morris was prompted to investigate the fenton photos and even GO TO the crimea and try to find the spot (he succeeds) because of a passage in susan sontag's regarding the pain of others (which i now also have to read). what's interesting is that she didn't reproduce the photo in her book, so he became curious about it solely due to the words she wrote - which i find a fascinating illumination of the question of words vs. photos. he sums it up very well in chapter 2: "photography presents things and at the same time hides things from our view, and the coupling of photography and language provides an express train to error." (p. 85) - it is this he explores in the book as a whole. "photographs provide evidence, but no shortcut to reality. it is often said that seeing is believing. but we do not form our beliefs on the basis of what we see, rather, what we see is often determined by our beliefs. believing is seeing, not the other way around." (p. 93)
some of the highlights from the fenton chapter:
"war is such a peculiar thing - inaugurated by the whims of few, affecting the fate of many. it is a difficult, if not impossible, thing ot understand, yet we feel compelled to describe it as though it has meaning-even virtue. it starts for reasons often hopelessly obscure, meanders on, then stops." (p. 30)
"photographs provide an alternative way of looking into history. not into general history--but into a specific moment, a specific place. it is as if we have reached into the past and created a tiny peephole." (p. 31)
"..the crimean war is the "perfect war." it was started for obscure reasons, was hopelessly murderous, and accomplished nothing." (p. 36)
"a war defined by innovations in wardrobe--a sleeve, a sweater, and a hat." (p. 36)
"but to navigate in the world--to read the world, so to speak--we need to see the world has having some sort of purpose, some sort of motivation. (it is too frightening otherwise.) hence, we see intentionality everywhere." (p. 36)
"we want to know where we end and the world begins. we want to know where that line is. it's the deepest problem of epistemology." (p. 37)
a central question of the book:
"illegitimate? are there really legitimate and illegitimate reasons for altering a scene?" (p. 52)
"once you change the scene, you cease to simply be an observer." (p. 54)
and another:
"are you saying that to interpret a picture we need more than the picture itself? we need context?" (p. 54)
"the problem with the scientific side of it is that the photographer was not a neutral observer. he picked the best picture he could find." (p. 54)
"with so many variables (haze, clouds, emulsion), how can one ever determine whether the shadows reflect real shadows or some artifact of the photographic process? it was an epistemic shadow." (p. 55)
i think i fell a little bit in love when i read this:
"there is something deeply unsettling about the thought that all the evidence might depend on a print. which print? why one print over another? if all the prints are different, where is reality? how can the real world be recovered from the simulacrum?" (p.55)
and finally, he asked the question that had been lurking in my mind:
"posing is not necessarily deception. deception is deception." (p. 56)
quoting helmut gernsheim:
"neither camera, nor lens, nor film determine the quality of pictures, it is the visual perception of the man behind the mechanism which brings them to live." (p. 57)
"is it unnatural to have people move cannonballs? or inauthentic? aren't these photographs of human events--even if there are no people in the frame. they are photographs about war. the effects of war. is war itself natural or authentic? the concepts of naturalness, authenticity, and posing are all slippery slopes that when carefully examined become hopelessly vague." (p. 58)
dennis purcell on examining a photo taken by morris' team 150 years later and finding some of the same stones:
"how many things in the world have changed so little in one hundred and fifty years? how in the world, where there's so much information, can there be such a high level of ignorance? certainly the more information we get, the higher the level of ignorance seems to be." (p. 62)
"couldn't you argue that every photograph is posed because every photograph excludes something? even in framing and cropping? someone has made a decision..." (p. 65)
"he posed the photograph, but ho would you know? the photograph is not posed by the presence of the elephant but by its absence. isn't something always excluded, an elephant or something else? isn't there always a possible elephant lurking just at the edge of the frame?
this is precisely what i love so much about this book:
"by thinking about the fenton photographs we are essentially thinking about some of the most vexing issues in photography--about posing, about the intentions of the photographer, about the nature of photographic evidence--about the relationship between photographs and reality." (p. 67)
"photographs preserve information. they record data. they present evidence. not because of our intentions but often in spite of them." (p. 69)
quoting roy flukinger:
"there's a whole other level that reaches a person through the eyes....photography has a certain immediacy--not only in the taking, but also at the end of the equation, the presenting of the image to a viewer."
my other favorite chapter is chapter 4, where he spends a lot of time talking about arthur rothstein's photo of a horned cow skull on the dry, cracked ground of pennington county in western south dakota. rothstein took a series of shots of the skull, which was found there in the environment, moving it around to get the most advantageous light and shadows. he admitted that he moved the skull, but there was great controversy surrounding it - as if he had done so to make the drought look even worse. in my view, he moved the skull as any photographer would, to get the best shadows and the most drama from the shot - the question gets sticky when you consider whether it was documentary or art photography, as it would seem more honest as art to take liberties with the scene.
the chapter also discusses walker evans shots of a sharecropper's cabin and whether the small portable alarm clock on the mantlepiece belonged to the dirt poor gudgers or not. in a shot of a room that otherwise seems staged and moved around to accomodate tripods and get the best light, does it matter? again, a question of documentary vs. artistic. (tho' admittedly walker's mission was quite clearly documentary.) he was accompanied by writer james agee at the shoot and it's from agee's careful list that the question of the clock arises, as it's not on it. "there's this idea of capturing reality in words--as if his prose was in competition with evans's camera" (p. 155) - that maybe the most interesting question of all and again gets back to a central premise of the book - the intersection between photo and word - and whether one can be more true than the other?
interesting quotes from the chapter:
"our lives are partially defined by ephemera-address books, bus tickets, campaign buttons. a trail of detritus. but do we have the right bits of detritus--the right evidence--to answer the question?" (p. 146)
"agee wrestles with the idea of capturing reality." (p. 152)
"agee is constantly wrestling with memory and with a dark sense of intrusion." (p. 153) (i would ask, who isn't? all. the. time.)
"if there is an element of posing in all pictures, why should be praise evans and condemn rothstein." (p. 156)
"it's all part of a photographer's arsenal. framing, film emulsion, f-stop, focal length, etc., etc." (p. 159)
"one thing that evans is famous for saying is what matters in photography isn't the camera, it's your eye. it's seeing what's beautiful." (p. 163)
"he (evans) was always in favor of waiting thirty years with photographs. he said after thirty years you will know what you have there." (p. 164) (this is very interesting!!)
"but the minute you take one picture as opposed to another, or the minute you select one photograph from a group of photographs, you are doing something very, very similar to manipulating reality." (p. 164)
"she (dorthea lange) had a feeling that you wanted to present things so that the immediacy of now was not shockingly visible." (p. 164) (also very interesting to ponder).
"the whole act of creating a photograph is an act of cropping reality. the 'secondary' cropping where you take the negative and you pick some area that you like for the photograph is secondary to the first act, which is the act of tearing an image from the fabric of reality." (p. 165) (bold emphasis is mine.)
i find this question to be more connect to the nature of memory that morris goes into:
"photographs concern belief, not truth." (p. 170)
and more on pictures vs. words, quoting rothstein:
"just as the photograph in its visual sincerity may influence the view, so does the printed word carry the power of persuasion." (p. 172) "the lesson to be learned is that photographer must be aware of and concerned about the words that accompany a picture. these words should be considered ascarefully as the lighting, exposure and composition of the photograph." (p. 173)
and on his "fleeing a dust storm" photo:
"it's a picture that went through a kind of evolutionary process all by itself. it has a life of its own." (p. 173)
there's an interesting section in the chapter about re-photography: where contemporary photographers go out to find the people in famous photos (dorthea lange's migrant woman and the little boy from rothstein's dust bowl photo. the photo of the migrant woman and her daughters taken in 1979 vs. the original from 1936 actually spoils the original photo for me - she was so beautiful somehow in the original shot by lange and in the one 43 years later, she is mundane and ordinary and even rather ugly. i actually wish i hadn't seen it. the same isn't true for me of the little boy from the dust bowl and his older self in his living room - maybe because he's more attractive, but also because of the painting of his famous photo on the wall behind him. morris asks bill ganzel, who did the re-photography project:
M: would you describe your project as an attempt to get inside of a photograph?
G: i would say it slightly differently. i would say "go behind the photograph" or "extend the photograph."
M: to put it in history, to uncover an unseen context?
G: absolutely. (p. 184)
"the more famous a photograph becomes, the more likely people are to find fault with it or to question its 'authenticity'...photographs may be taken but we are also taken in by them." (p. 184)
"a photograph can capture a patch of reality, but it can also leave a strange footprint: an impression of an instantly lost past around which memories collect." (p. 185)
"eternally trapped in the present, we are doomed to perpetually walk 'in front' of the past." (185)
so very powerful:
"it is not just that day that is captured in the photograph. it is how he has come to see his childhood. and how we have come to see an entire era. it rings time forward, but also compresses it, collapses it into one moment. it is the idea that the photograph captures that endures." (p. 185)
and the last interesting bit i want to share is in the mickey mouse chapter - a photo of a lonely child's toy in the rubble after a bombing in lebanon and whether it was staged or moved, like rothstein's skull. the photographer, ben curtis, explains how many factors go into a shot...the photograph is wandering around a whole day, hoping to get some usable shots (ones with what he calls "narrative compression" - which tell a story in one shot, he's got heavy camera bags around his waist, two cameras and not necessarily the perfect lens in place. it's the end of the day, it's getting dark and he spots the toy on the ground - he should have had a wide angle lens, but didn't, and it was too dusty to stop to and change when he might not be able to get his camera cleaned in the near future, so he takes the shot as it comes. there are so many factors surrounding the circumstances of a shot. the possibilities are nearly endless, but also very limiting.
i highly recommend this book and hope errol morris writes another, with a whole new set of intriguing photographs.
April 19, 2019
Starts with an incredible detective story. Morris is such an interesting thinker - trusting nothing - so he's always at least a bit interesting. This gets a little weedsy for most, but opening chapter is worthy.
September 21, 2019
Deeply thought provoking and engaging. Incredibly timely.
March 14, 2021
This helped me see further into photographs but it is geeky so you gotta wanna look at this.
January 22, 2024
“Photography gives us more questions than answers”
June 18, 2017
A close but informal look at photography, journalism, history, propaganda, and truth using a half-dozen or so examples. Very educational and thought-provoking. As the jacket copy says "part detective story, part philosophical meditation."
October 26, 2022
Kiinnostava aihe, mutta meni vähän liian yksityiskohtaiseksi omaan makuun.
August 31, 2011
It's rare that I can read a book of essays and not find one of them boring. In an ordinary collection, at least one will be about something Ihave absolutely dull and am forced to either finish reading it, or miss out on something I could learn from. Thankfully with Believing Is Seeing, documentary film maker, Errol Morris, has managed to write 4 lively and interesting essays into an aspect of photography I've never really thought about before.
In these essays he examines the nature and history of documentary photography and the way it can be used to not only create a memorable image, but to create a flas image and a false reaction in the viewer as well. Through an exhausting amount of time researching and interviewing, he takes on the enormous taks of not only looking at why a particular picture is taken, but how it was taken. He delves into the minutae of whether or not a picture was staged and if it was, how it was achieved. Thankfully, he doesn't stop his examination there. He also chose to investigate the motivations behind and the fallout after the fact. Does it really matter if a cow skull is moved around if it get the same point across? Does a picture have to be staged to create a false impression? Does the way a photographer frames and edits alter the image itself?
In "Abu Ghraib Essays (Photographs Reveal And Conceal)" he examines two photographs that I think we would all recognize. The first is of a hooded man standing on a box, hooked up to what appears to be wires. The man is being tortured and it's hard not to have an initial reaction to it. What I did not know before reading this book was that the man has been positively identified, but also had a different man claiming to be him. Morris examines the backround of the story and hwo the fact a man falesly came forward changed the dynamic of hte story and the photograph itself. Does this false claim make the horrow of any less impactful? Does he hurt the cause of justice for the other victims of Abu Ghraib? Does the fact that he may have truly believed he was the man in the picture, matter at all?
The second photograph examined in this essay is the infamous one of MP Sabrina Harman posing with a dead prisoner, giving the thumbs up sign. When I first saw the photograph, I was appalled by the image. In my gut, I was horrified and embarrased that a fellow American, a soldier, was appearing to be so callous in the face of a horrific death. I'm grateful that Morris chose this photograph to delve into. He not only examined the motivations of Sabrina Harman, but he looked into the backstory of the events that lead up to the photograph. I still have a visceral reaction when I look at the picture, but I'm no longer judging the young soldier pictured in it. If this essay taught me anything, I learned that without knowing the context of a picture, there is no way to get the whole story.
In these essays he examines the nature and history of documentary photography and the way it can be used to not only create a memorable image, but to create a flas image and a false reaction in the viewer as well. Through an exhausting amount of time researching and interviewing, he takes on the enormous taks of not only looking at why a particular picture is taken, but how it was taken. He delves into the minutae of whether or not a picture was staged and if it was, how it was achieved. Thankfully, he doesn't stop his examination there. He also chose to investigate the motivations behind and the fallout after the fact. Does it really matter if a cow skull is moved around if it get the same point across? Does a picture have to be staged to create a false impression? Does the way a photographer frames and edits alter the image itself?
In "Abu Ghraib Essays (Photographs Reveal And Conceal)" he examines two photographs that I think we would all recognize. The first is of a hooded man standing on a box, hooked up to what appears to be wires. The man is being tortured and it's hard not to have an initial reaction to it. What I did not know before reading this book was that the man has been positively identified, but also had a different man claiming to be him. Morris examines the backround of the story and hwo the fact a man falesly came forward changed the dynamic of hte story and the photograph itself. Does this false claim make the horrow of any less impactful? Does he hurt the cause of justice for the other victims of Abu Ghraib? Does the fact that he may have truly believed he was the man in the picture, matter at all?
The second photograph examined in this essay is the infamous one of MP Sabrina Harman posing with a dead prisoner, giving the thumbs up sign. When I first saw the photograph, I was appalled by the image. In my gut, I was horrified and embarrased that a fellow American, a soldier, was appearing to be so callous in the face of a horrific death. I'm grateful that Morris chose this photograph to delve into. He not only examined the motivations of Sabrina Harman, but he looked into the backstory of the events that lead up to the photograph. I still have a visceral reaction when I look at the picture, but I'm no longer judging the young soldier pictured in it. If this essay taught me anything, I learned that without knowing the context of a picture, there is no way to get the whole story.
Read
October 30, 2011I have to admit I was not keen to read this book because I found Morris' blog posts on the NYTimes site kind of tiring to read through. But those same essays, in book form, are much more engaging and enjoyable. Part of the reason is the design of the book, with illustrations as well placed as an Edward Tufte volume. The readability comes also from the fact that some of the writing is in the form of "dialogue" -- transcripts (edited, presumably) of conversations Morris had with others.
The book is an exploration of photographic mysteries -- a pair of photos from the Crimean war, smiling at Abu Ghraib, a child's toy in Lebanon, among them -- and Morris does a good job of describing what historians, art historians, specifically, do to create history, as well as the limits of that pursuit. Some of his explanations of academic research are rather pedantic for anyone who has engaged in it, but overall, his writing is a lot more readable than 99% of academics.
Given the many illustrations and white space, this is not actually that long a book, but covers a lot of ground entertainingly.
The book is an exploration of photographic mysteries -- a pair of photos from the Crimean war, smiling at Abu Ghraib, a child's toy in Lebanon, among them -- and Morris does a good job of describing what historians, art historians, specifically, do to create history, as well as the limits of that pursuit. Some of his explanations of academic research are rather pedantic for anyone who has engaged in it, but overall, his writing is a lot more readable than 99% of academics.
Given the many illustrations and white space, this is not actually that long a book, but covers a lot of ground entertainingly.
January 25, 2015
Amazing analysis of photography, history, and human psychology. Errol Morris's conversational style and investigative approach takes you through five different photographs and the questions we should ask about them. The torture at Abu Grahib occurred while I was still quite young, and my re-education on this event was aided through Morris's simultaneous education and questioning about the way we learn and remember about world events. An awesome book to fulfill my thirst for media analysis and questions of truth as a recent college graduate.
July 12, 2017
This book is probably especially interesting to those pursuing a journalistic on-field career. It reveals the way the same 'facts' can be processed into different truths, depending on who's doing the processing, and how sometimes even the most trustworthy documentaries carry a more than acceptable dose of truth-bending.
The case studies are particularly nice, and a welcome break from the otherwise column-style monotony of the read.
The case studies are particularly nice, and a welcome break from the otherwise column-style monotony of the read.
February 27, 2012
Very well-written and interesting exploration of issues related to photography and certain photographs. If I were more into photography or fact-checking, I probably would have really liked it.
June 7, 2024
This is really four essays, collected into one volume.
The first essay focuses on a series of photographs taken by Roger Fenton of a road in "The Valley of the Shadow of Death". One photo has cannon balls littered on the road, the other, the cannon balls are on the side of the road and around. There has been ongoing commentary for around 150 years on whether the photo is staged, with the cannon balls placed on the road in a second photo (including, notably, by Susan Sontag). The essay outlines Morris' investigation - he employs sophisticated techniques to analyse the photos to get the the bottom of this, but ultimately, the question is "does this matter? What does staging mean, in the end? There was no less risk taken with the cannon balls on photo than off, and if it communicates the meaning of the horror of war to an audience usually ignorant to it, what does it matter? Morris does arrive to an answer, but I wont spoil it here. 4/5 for this essay.
The second essay is of the photographs from Abu Ghraib, of Sabrina Harman giving a thumbs up next to the corpse of a dead Iraqi. The essay starts with Morris contending that Harman isn't a bad person - which is shocking to the reader. But then, he unpacks the photograph. It doesn't hurt that this was the subject of one of his documentaries "Standard Operating Procedure", so he knows a lot about the subject and is well connected. The truth is more horrifying. The Iraqi man, Mr Manadel al-Jamadi, was, Morris alleges, killed during interrogation by unnamed US agencies. Harman was young, junior, stupid, and trying to fit in when she was taking these photos. It doesn't excuse the horror of these photos, and others, but the essay describes how later she took photos documenting the injuries the man had sustained. If she hadn't taken these, then the truth about how the man died would never have come to light, as agencies and higher-ups rushed to cover it up. To be clear, this in no way absolves her of her actions and the photographs - the human pyramid, the hooded man, the smile next to the corpse - all document inhumanity. The essay then describes why we feel such horror with this photo - and concludes that it is the image of a smiling woman, who invites us to smile with her, juxtaposed with a tortured, dead man. The disgust at the image, and our involuntary reaction, compounds the horror.
Another essay alongside this one discusses the "hooded man" photo, and how an Iraqi civil society activist had tried to pass himself off as this man. It's left to us to decide whether this is forgivable or not, given he is advocating on behalf of victims.
These essays are excellent - 4.5/5
The third collection of essays are on the photos taken during Dustbowl America, by the Roosavelt Administration's Farm Security Administration, which was created to document rural poverty. You know these images - "Migrant Mother" is one of the best known. This essay is a bit long and meandering, discussing the ethics of moving a cow skull, "staging" images, and how captions juxtaposed with images can change their meaning. It's a fascinating essay, but a bit too long.
The second essay in this collection is on photographs taken during the Israel-Lebanon war of 2006 - particularly of children's toys juxtaposed with bombed-out houses. The essay is essentially one long interview with a war photographer, and how he has been often accused of placing the children's toys as a propaganda piece. However, the photographer goes to pains to say that he does not stage images - if he did, the angles and images would be better - but this is deeply against his ethics as a documentarian. It's a good essay for the ethical discussion, even if I learned more from the first. 3/5
The final series of essays concern a photograph of three children, found in the hand of a dead soldier in the US Civil War at Gettysburg (Sgt Amos Humiston). It documents how the image was used in a search for the man's family, and became famous because of it. The man who made copies (Dr. Bournes) and led the search then was instrumental in setting up an orphanage for civil war orphans - which later became notorious for child abuse by a sadistic headmistress, who was skimming from the top (was Dr Bournes in on it?) Morris tracks down the great grandchildren of Sgt Humiston to try to learn more about the man. One great grandchild is obsessed with leanage; an archaeologist. The other, who inherited Humiston's letters, has tried to donate the letters to a library, and may have lost them. The essay meditates on how some spend their futures exploring the past; others move on. It's an interesting subject, and I learned much from the essay, but it was a bit meandering and didn't get to its point well. 3/5
Taken together, I'd give this book 3.5/5. It's worth the read, and worth reflecting on.
The first essay focuses on a series of photographs taken by Roger Fenton of a road in "The Valley of the Shadow of Death". One photo has cannon balls littered on the road, the other, the cannon balls are on the side of the road and around. There has been ongoing commentary for around 150 years on whether the photo is staged, with the cannon balls placed on the road in a second photo (including, notably, by Susan Sontag). The essay outlines Morris' investigation - he employs sophisticated techniques to analyse the photos to get the the bottom of this, but ultimately, the question is "does this matter? What does staging mean, in the end? There was no less risk taken with the cannon balls on photo than off, and if it communicates the meaning of the horror of war to an audience usually ignorant to it, what does it matter? Morris does arrive to an answer, but I wont spoil it here. 4/5 for this essay.
The second essay is of the photographs from Abu Ghraib, of Sabrina Harman giving a thumbs up next to the corpse of a dead Iraqi. The essay starts with Morris contending that Harman isn't a bad person - which is shocking to the reader. But then, he unpacks the photograph. It doesn't hurt that this was the subject of one of his documentaries "Standard Operating Procedure", so he knows a lot about the subject and is well connected. The truth is more horrifying. The Iraqi man, Mr Manadel al-Jamadi, was, Morris alleges, killed during interrogation by unnamed US agencies. Harman was young, junior, stupid, and trying to fit in when she was taking these photos. It doesn't excuse the horror of these photos, and others, but the essay describes how later she took photos documenting the injuries the man had sustained. If she hadn't taken these, then the truth about how the man died would never have come to light, as agencies and higher-ups rushed to cover it up. To be clear, this in no way absolves her of her actions and the photographs - the human pyramid, the hooded man, the smile next to the corpse - all document inhumanity. The essay then describes why we feel such horror with this photo - and concludes that it is the image of a smiling woman, who invites us to smile with her, juxtaposed with a tortured, dead man. The disgust at the image, and our involuntary reaction, compounds the horror.
Another essay alongside this one discusses the "hooded man" photo, and how an Iraqi civil society activist had tried to pass himself off as this man. It's left to us to decide whether this is forgivable or not, given he is advocating on behalf of victims.
These essays are excellent - 4.5/5
The third collection of essays are on the photos taken during Dustbowl America, by the Roosavelt Administration's Farm Security Administration, which was created to document rural poverty. You know these images - "Migrant Mother" is one of the best known. This essay is a bit long and meandering, discussing the ethics of moving a cow skull, "staging" images, and how captions juxtaposed with images can change their meaning. It's a fascinating essay, but a bit too long.
The second essay in this collection is on photographs taken during the Israel-Lebanon war of 2006 - particularly of children's toys juxtaposed with bombed-out houses. The essay is essentially one long interview with a war photographer, and how he has been often accused of placing the children's toys as a propaganda piece. However, the photographer goes to pains to say that he does not stage images - if he did, the angles and images would be better - but this is deeply against his ethics as a documentarian. It's a good essay for the ethical discussion, even if I learned more from the first. 3/5
The final series of essays concern a photograph of three children, found in the hand of a dead soldier in the US Civil War at Gettysburg (Sgt Amos Humiston). It documents how the image was used in a search for the man's family, and became famous because of it. The man who made copies (Dr. Bournes) and led the search then was instrumental in setting up an orphanage for civil war orphans - which later became notorious for child abuse by a sadistic headmistress, who was skimming from the top (was Dr Bournes in on it?) Morris tracks down the great grandchildren of Sgt Humiston to try to learn more about the man. One great grandchild is obsessed with leanage; an archaeologist. The other, who inherited Humiston's letters, has tried to donate the letters to a library, and may have lost them. The essay meditates on how some spend their futures exploring the past; others move on. It's an interesting subject, and I learned much from the essay, but it was a bit meandering and didn't get to its point well. 3/5
Taken together, I'd give this book 3.5/5. It's worth the read, and worth reflecting on.
March 4, 2018
The five star review really has to be earned, in my opinion, and often it's because I've never read anything quite like it before. And it's often these books that have been hanging out on my "to read" list for years, that I didn't think would really be of interest to me anymore. This one, I read a couple pages and actually considered just returning it (because I like the feeling of returning things to the library). Then one night, struggling to sleep, I sat down and delved in and realized this book is totally nuts, intense, and the opposite of vital - not only unnecessary but exorbitant. Obsessive, is a word that came to mind when following Morris's minutiae. And yet obsession can beget cohesion, tenacity, and ardor. A mind blowing commitment to his topic accomplished with a pure and entirely effective approach.
The book is impeccably edited and thus a pleasure to read. It is a book of essays and interviews interspersed with color photos of reference. What works here is that Morris does not ruminate on end about his topic: the way our thoughts influence what we see in photographs and how we interpret their meaning and importance. Instead he takes seven specific photos of significance from history and investigates for each it's history, context, backstory, controversies and critiques, interviews of the people involved, historians, museum curators, descendants, journalists, artists, interpreters, and really anyone he can think of that will expand the knowledge of the true facts concerning the photo. He talks a lot about posing, and if it's ok to do - people pose for photographs all the time, but other times it is essential for a photo to be completely and utterly documentary. (This briefly brings up an interesting example of a group posing for a photographer, the moment captured by a second photographer that none of the subjects or first photographer are aware of. Is this photo of the photographer and his posing subjects, posed?) This puts forward the issue of photo cropping - removing things from the frame of view of a photograph, thus changing what is presented. Indeed, even the act of taking a photo can be considered cropping - the act of pointing a camera at one thing, leaving out other parts of the surrounding scene. To take it one step further, is even selecting a photo from a group of photos a type of cropping - for example, choosing one from a spread of 100, presumably the clearest, most humanizing, effective, and well composed, but also omitting the rest, to be print with an article in a paper.
Another point discussed are pre-conceived perceptions and how they affect not only what we physically see in a photograph, but what we will accept and reject to be true about the context of the photo. Who took the photo - why? Was that acceptable at the time? Would it be now? Does it matter, on a larger scale, if a photo is "deceiving" in some way, when perhaps it provides a perception that is ultimately true. Do we use contextual critiques of photographers to help us ignore uncomfortable feelings presented by a photo? And on, indeed, one's reaction to a photo can say as much about the individual viewer, or group of viewers, as it does (or does not) about the subjects in the frame.
Lastly, I have to point out how the author lays out complete, detailed, yet not mind-numbing accounts of history - often of wars. These are little slices of time, not all encompassing, but fascinating and significant to the understanding of these major chapters of human history. Every historical fact presented is relevantly tied in to the story and the topic. I appreciate it so much; I wish all non-fiction were written in this way! I can't recommend the book, because at times (more than a few) I thought to myself, this does not matter, at all, to anyone except you. If I'm wasting an afternoon reading this trivia- well, how many months and years were wasted in compiling the trivia together for this book?! And yet how masterfully it combines to make his clear and thought-provoking point. An amazing composition.
The book is impeccably edited and thus a pleasure to read. It is a book of essays and interviews interspersed with color photos of reference. What works here is that Morris does not ruminate on end about his topic: the way our thoughts influence what we see in photographs and how we interpret their meaning and importance. Instead he takes seven specific photos of significance from history and investigates for each it's history, context, backstory, controversies and critiques, interviews of the people involved, historians, museum curators, descendants, journalists, artists, interpreters, and really anyone he can think of that will expand the knowledge of the true facts concerning the photo. He talks a lot about posing, and if it's ok to do - people pose for photographs all the time, but other times it is essential for a photo to be completely and utterly documentary. (This briefly brings up an interesting example of a group posing for a photographer, the moment captured by a second photographer that none of the subjects or first photographer are aware of. Is this photo of the photographer and his posing subjects, posed?) This puts forward the issue of photo cropping - removing things from the frame of view of a photograph, thus changing what is presented. Indeed, even the act of taking a photo can be considered cropping - the act of pointing a camera at one thing, leaving out other parts of the surrounding scene. To take it one step further, is even selecting a photo from a group of photos a type of cropping - for example, choosing one from a spread of 100, presumably the clearest, most humanizing, effective, and well composed, but also omitting the rest, to be print with an article in a paper.
Another point discussed are pre-conceived perceptions and how they affect not only what we physically see in a photograph, but what we will accept and reject to be true about the context of the photo. Who took the photo - why? Was that acceptable at the time? Would it be now? Does it matter, on a larger scale, if a photo is "deceiving" in some way, when perhaps it provides a perception that is ultimately true. Do we use contextual critiques of photographers to help us ignore uncomfortable feelings presented by a photo? And on, indeed, one's reaction to a photo can say as much about the individual viewer, or group of viewers, as it does (or does not) about the subjects in the frame.
Lastly, I have to point out how the author lays out complete, detailed, yet not mind-numbing accounts of history - often of wars. These are little slices of time, not all encompassing, but fascinating and significant to the understanding of these major chapters of human history. Every historical fact presented is relevantly tied in to the story and the topic. I appreciate it so much; I wish all non-fiction were written in this way! I can't recommend the book, because at times (more than a few) I thought to myself, this does not matter, at all, to anyone except you. If I'm wasting an afternoon reading this trivia- well, how many months and years were wasted in compiling the trivia together for this book?! And yet how masterfully it combines to make his clear and thought-provoking point. An amazing composition.
February 10, 2022
Morris is a legendary documentary filmmaker whose interrogations of truth have had a huge influence on the craft, so it's not surprising that his 2008 film (Standard Operating Procedure) on Abu Gharibphotographs sparked this broader written inquiry into the nature of photography. "Inquiry" implies a quasi-scientific approach and also curiosity, both of which Morris blends here into a kind of illustrated essayistic approach that's quite personal. The book opens with a brief reflection on his own father (who died before Morris was able to form memories of him), and the extent to which photos of his father can possibly allow Morris to "know" him and the extent that is shaped by other stories about his father.
And that's really the entire premise of the book -- that photographs cannot ever embody some objective reality or truth, they are always seen through the lens of belief and context that each viewer brings with them. The four main essays explore different dimensions of such lenses through Morris's idiosyncratic (and often amusing) approach. The first is a famous Crimean War photo of a cannonball-strewn road, and its sibling photo of the exact same road without the cannonballs. Which came first, and why, and does the answer matter? Morris digs into all the writing about the photos, and embarks on forensic sleuthing to try and establish once and for all what the "truth" is, traveling to Crimea to walk the exact landscape.
Next up are the infamous Abu Gharib photos, both the question of the identity of the "hooded man" as well as the "thumbs up" pose next to a corpse. Here, the book delves deeply into reports, interviews, transcripts, and it can get a little herky-jerky at times. The book is heavily illustrated with photos in the body of the main text, but there's also a large section of endnotes, with lots more text, and more photos. All of which entails a lot of flipping back and forth, and I'm not sure this is very successful. It's not entirely clear why some elements are deemed important enough for the main text, and some are relegated to the back, and it creates a level of friction with the reader.
The next section looks at some of the famous WPA photos of the American Depression and the Dust Bowl, and considers the issue of staging, and to what extent that is inauthentic or deceitful. This is carried forward in a contemporary context with some conflict photography from Lebanon, and the editorial process used in journalism in the digital age. The book winds up with a photo of three children found in the jacket of a dead Civil War soldier and explores how that image was used after the war. This last essay lacks the power and punch of the first three -- which use comparatively far more famous images are their take-off points.
The book is an imperfect and kind of wildly discursive ride -- but one I found completely compelling. Its central thesis is crucial in relation to modern media and visual literacy, and it's not surprising to me that the professional photographers I know all hold the book in high regard. Basically, if you have any interest in photography as an art or communication tool, this is essential reading.
And that's really the entire premise of the book -- that photographs cannot ever embody some objective reality or truth, they are always seen through the lens of belief and context that each viewer brings with them. The four main essays explore different dimensions of such lenses through Morris's idiosyncratic (and often amusing) approach. The first is a famous Crimean War photo of a cannonball-strewn road, and its sibling photo of the exact same road without the cannonballs. Which came first, and why, and does the answer matter? Morris digs into all the writing about the photos, and embarks on forensic sleuthing to try and establish once and for all what the "truth" is, traveling to Crimea to walk the exact landscape.
Next up are the infamous Abu Gharib photos, both the question of the identity of the "hooded man" as well as the "thumbs up" pose next to a corpse. Here, the book delves deeply into reports, interviews, transcripts, and it can get a little herky-jerky at times. The book is heavily illustrated with photos in the body of the main text, but there's also a large section of endnotes, with lots more text, and more photos. All of which entails a lot of flipping back and forth, and I'm not sure this is very successful. It's not entirely clear why some elements are deemed important enough for the main text, and some are relegated to the back, and it creates a level of friction with the reader.
The next section looks at some of the famous WPA photos of the American Depression and the Dust Bowl, and considers the issue of staging, and to what extent that is inauthentic or deceitful. This is carried forward in a contemporary context with some conflict photography from Lebanon, and the editorial process used in journalism in the digital age. The book winds up with a photo of three children found in the jacket of a dead Civil War soldier and explores how that image was used after the war. This last essay lacks the power and punch of the first three -- which use comparatively far more famous images are their take-off points.
The book is an imperfect and kind of wildly discursive ride -- but one I found completely compelling. Its central thesis is crucial in relation to modern media and visual literacy, and it's not surprising to me that the professional photographers I know all hold the book in high regard. Basically, if you have any interest in photography as an art or communication tool, this is essential reading.
January 5, 2020
Disappointing in several ways:
1) The use of language was not compelling, and there were a few grammatical errors too many.
2) The four sections were not linked to the extent that they created a satisfying whole, and there was no reasoning offered for the choices of the case studies included except that the author became somewhat obsessed with them (which is of course reason enough, I suppose).
3) The research and conversations reproduced in the book were sometimes excruciatingly detailed and did not lend sufficient credence to Morris' arguments to make it worth trudging through the minutae.
4) The book is so wholly (and seemingly unconsciously) male that it made me feel almost irrelevant as even a female reader. I'm not sure I've ever had this experience before. A 2011 American publication, even if experts in the field are (still) overwhelmingly male, should surely choose words like "person" or "individual" instead of "guy" or "man" when referring to contemporary hypothetical subjects. I also noted with chagrin that the soldier whose story formed much of the basis of Chapters 2 and 3 was often referred to as "Sabrina" in the same paragraphs in which her male colleagues were referred to by last name. These male colleagues were identified by first names only at no point in the narrative (unless I am mistaken).
To put it more generally, I would have liked to sense more reflective spirit and connective tissue, both between the chapters and between author and reader, in a book dealing with big issues such as intentionality, authenticity, and truth.
In spite of the above shortcomings, which made the reading significantly less enjoyable for me, I did learn quite a bit about the technical history of photography and about several related fields with which I would have been unlikely to come into contact otherwise. I also appreciate Morris' persistence in seeking answers and certainty as well as his concern with offering balancing opinions as expressed and evidenced in Chapter 6.
1) The use of language was not compelling, and there were a few grammatical errors too many.
2) The four sections were not linked to the extent that they created a satisfying whole, and there was no reasoning offered for the choices of the case studies included except that the author became somewhat obsessed with them (which is of course reason enough, I suppose).
3) The research and conversations reproduced in the book were sometimes excruciatingly detailed and did not lend sufficient credence to Morris' arguments to make it worth trudging through the minutae.
4) The book is so wholly (and seemingly unconsciously) male that it made me feel almost irrelevant as even a female reader. I'm not sure I've ever had this experience before. A 2011 American publication, even if experts in the field are (still) overwhelmingly male, should surely choose words like "person" or "individual" instead of "guy" or "man" when referring to contemporary hypothetical subjects. I also noted with chagrin that the soldier whose story formed much of the basis of Chapters 2 and 3 was often referred to as "Sabrina" in the same paragraphs in which her male colleagues were referred to by last name. These male colleagues were identified by first names only at no point in the narrative (unless I am mistaken).
To put it more generally, I would have liked to sense more reflective spirit and connective tissue, both between the chapters and between author and reader, in a book dealing with big issues such as intentionality, authenticity, and truth.
In spite of the above shortcomings, which made the reading significantly less enjoyable for me, I did learn quite a bit about the technical history of photography and about several related fields with which I would have been unlikely to come into contact otherwise. I also appreciate Morris' persistence in seeking answers and certainty as well as his concern with offering balancing opinions as expressed and evidenced in Chapter 6.
January 20, 2025
"With the advent of photography, images were torn free from the world, snatched from the fabric of reality, and enshrined as separate entities. They became more like dreams. It is no wonder that we really don't know how to deal with them."
when people experience art, two paradoxical truths must be understood to be the case in trying to dissect it for meaning. one, you cannot understand a person merely by examining the art they make. there is too much context that cannot possibly be known through the wall of distance that art creates, that people create every time they attempt to communicate something. second, the artist is incapable of not putting some aspect of themself into the art that they create. there is always a lens, a filter, a bias, a frame, something that reflects the truth of the person who made it, no matter how cleverly or effectively the author attempts to remove themself from the conversation. photographs add something more fundamental to this paradox, it seems, because whether from people being overly trusting of them or overly distrustful of them, photographs add the question of truth into the mix. do we understand the subject viewed through a lens to be true? what's kept out of frame, and what gets centered? is it a betrayal of truth when a false symbol is used to represent a very real hardship?
the chapter on the soldiers and the prisoners was one of the hardest things to read i've ever made myself finish, and it was only a small fraction of what goes on in every conflict, with every military, but especially with the u.s. military and the "war on terror." there is a reason i avoid nonfictional horror, but it feels important not to look away from these ones. sometimes the only thing you can do in the face of a horror you can't have possibly done anything to prevent is learn all you can about it to prevent the next time from happening.
when people experience art, two paradoxical truths must be understood to be the case in trying to dissect it for meaning. one, you cannot understand a person merely by examining the art they make. there is too much context that cannot possibly be known through the wall of distance that art creates, that people create every time they attempt to communicate something. second, the artist is incapable of not putting some aspect of themself into the art that they create. there is always a lens, a filter, a bias, a frame, something that reflects the truth of the person who made it, no matter how cleverly or effectively the author attempts to remove themself from the conversation. photographs add something more fundamental to this paradox, it seems, because whether from people being overly trusting of them or overly distrustful of them, photographs add the question of truth into the mix. do we understand the subject viewed through a lens to be true? what's kept out of frame, and what gets centered? is it a betrayal of truth when a false symbol is used to represent a very real hardship?
the chapter on the soldiers and the prisoners was one of the hardest things to read i've ever made myself finish, and it was only a small fraction of what goes on in every conflict, with every military, but especially with the u.s. military and the "war on terror." there is a reason i avoid nonfictional horror, but it feels important not to look away from these ones. sometimes the only thing you can do in the face of a horror you can't have possibly done anything to prevent is learn all you can about it to prevent the next time from happening.
January 14, 2019
A thoroughly intriguing treatise on the the truth behind photographs. The author takes a handful of very well known photographs and examines the world just outside the image. Anyone who has spent any time in a journalism class or student newspaper has been exposed to the debate of ethics in journalism in regards to how images are presented.
In photography, where do you cross the line between presenting the real facts of a photograph and being manipulative? Sure we can agree it’s manipulative to use photoshop to alter the content of an image. But what about telephoto lens to change the appearance of decisions? What about light and metering? What if you alter the contents of a photo itself? At one point is the line crossed from faithfully representing a truth, to deceiving the viewer?
Errol Morris takes this a step further and, in a book that is almost more philosophical essay than history, researches the world outside several images we know so well. It is one of the great books that asks you more questions than it answers and leaves you thinking.
I highly recommend it to anyone remotely intrigued by the concept. I give the book 4 out of 5 only because the last chapter feels clunky and half-finished, in strong contrast the rest of the book that is extremely well done.
In photography, where do you cross the line between presenting the real facts of a photograph and being manipulative? Sure we can agree it’s manipulative to use photoshop to alter the content of an image. But what about telephoto lens to change the appearance of decisions? What about light and metering? What if you alter the contents of a photo itself? At one point is the line crossed from faithfully representing a truth, to deceiving the viewer?
Errol Morris takes this a step further and, in a book that is almost more philosophical essay than history, researches the world outside several images we know so well. It is one of the great books that asks you more questions than it answers and leaves you thinking.
I highly recommend it to anyone remotely intrigued by the concept. I give the book 4 out of 5 only because the last chapter feels clunky and half-finished, in strong contrast the rest of the book that is extremely well done.
February 25, 2018
This is a conversational, obsessive rumination about aspects of photography. Filmmaker Errol Morris asks: What can we really know from a photograph? How do we interpret and misinterpret photos? How has photography impacted our sense of reality, history, and evidence?
The book is primarily built around a handful of photographs (or related series of photographs): from the Crimean War, Abu Ghraib (the subject of Morris's film, "Stand Operating Procedure"), the Civil War, and a few others.
The book is almost always interesting, if digressive and a little repetitive. Morris worries some points a bit too much. That said, recommended for fans of Morris, offbeat criticism, and writing on photography.
The book is primarily built around a handful of photographs (or related series of photographs): from the Crimean War, Abu Ghraib (the subject of Morris's film, "Stand Operating Procedure"), the Civil War, and a few others.
The book is almost always interesting, if digressive and a little repetitive. Morris worries some points a bit too much. That said, recommended for fans of Morris, offbeat criticism, and writing on photography.
February 18, 2019
This is a very unusual book, probably not for everyone, but fascinating with those who like history, research, and a sense of detective work about the past. Errol Morris is a documentary film maker most famous for The Thin Blue Line, which examined the possibility of a wrongful conviction. In this book, he takes a series of famous photographs about which there has been some controversy, and digs deep into the historical record to find out whether we can prove that one side is right. A lot of the thrust of the book is about relativism, and about how we will never really know the answer to many questions. There's a degree of detail that might drive some people crazy, but it gives me the feeling of the thrill of the hunt.
May 31, 2020
Extremely interesting for those already acquainted with photography as a means of recording facts and history, with detailed analysis on the "why's" and the "how's" of interpreting the eventual interventions made in good faith by the photographers that the author examines. Only flaw is the mixture of different kinds of photography with varying levels of professional commitment. A professional photographer or photojournalist is altogether much more bound by the "truth" he / she records and follows (or certainly has to follow) a completely different path of ethics compared to an amateur or someone who just takes a photograph for "fun" or to boast to their peers.
Excellent description of how our lives are "saved from oblivion" thanks to photography.
Excellent description of how our lives are "saved from oblivion" thanks to photography.
May 13, 2017
This book is great, and I have a hard time rating it. While on the one hand it makes you think about these profound questions about photography, I also feel like it leaves much to be desired. There is just so much more to think about that he introduces. I wish he had attempted to give a cohesive idea or thought to it all. In the end is just feels like "isn't that a neat idea?" And my response is "YES! Now tell me more! Let's keep going!"
February 11, 2018
A curious documentary book, a connected series of essays on contextualizing and investigating photographic records beyond our initial visual assumptions. Written by a documentary filmmaker, nearly a script, the style is visual and heavily laced with interview transcripts of his explorations. Evidence of war (Crimean, Abu Ghraib, Israel/Lebanon, and US Civil War) is the theme throughout. Kinda good, kinda nerdy, thought provoking.
January 12, 2021
Errol Morris really opened a new perspective on photography and I've found it interesting. There are many aspects which were not really clear to me before.
However, the writing style is a bit random at times (e.g., a somewhat unrelated discussion of Mayan calendars) and some chapters are quite lengthy.
However, the writing style is a bit random at times (e.g., a somewhat unrelated discussion of Mayan calendars) and some chapters are quite lengthy.
March 15, 2020
As a someone with a degree in Photojournalism, I found this book particularly interesting and thought-provoking. I am in awe of Mr. Morris's insight, persistence, and unwillingness to accept quick & easy answers.
July 5, 2020
A fantastic exploration of what we know and don't know when we look at a photograph...although it ends on a whimper; I found the last chapter to be fairly dull compared to everything that came before. Regardless, a really fun and interesting read from one of the greatest documentarians.
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