BELIEVING IS SEEING

Believing is Seeing



Abstract

Oscar-winning filmmaker (The Fog of War) Morris investigates well-known images to examine the nature of truth in photography. He chooses images from four different wars (the Crimean War, the Civil War, the Iraq War, and the Israeli-Lebanese war) as well as photographs from the Farm Service Administration and the Works Progress Administration taken during and after the Great Depression. He approaches each photographic mystery as a forensic scientist would, performing exhaustive research, consulting historical and scientific experts, traveling to the sites where the photographs were made, and conducting experiments with exposure and lighting. What Morris reveals is that regardless of an image's historical data or metadata, inherently complex theoretical issues of intention, concealment, and revelation will always exist. Although the research is serious, extremely thorough, and extensively detailed, Morris's writing style is accessible and enjoyable. Originally published as individual essays in the New York Times, this book is destined to become a classic in photo theory. Morris frames these conversational essays as "a collection of mystery stories," casting himself as a detective charged with investigating the contested reality behind a photograph or set of photographs. He is drawn to documentary images--for example, of the Crimean War, the American Civil War, the Depression, and the Israel-Lebanon war--and reproduces many of these, along with transcripts of interviews with experts. As in his films, Morris includes much material that has little to do with his ostensible subjects, and is especially interested in odd or obsessive characters. This makes for unwieldy arguments but engaging stories, and underscores his insistence that when we talk about photographs we're talking about people. "It is important to remember that Faleh's existence continues outside the frame of the photograph," he writes of the "Hooded Man" of Abu Ghraib. "He is a real person."

Believing is Seeing

Introduction

"Believing is seeing" is the book that Errol Morris, an extraordinary documentary, investigates the mystery behind some of today's most famous photographs. In his book, Morris speaks of five case studies. In the first case study, the pictures of the Crimean cannonball, wrote about how we make certain assumptions about the intentions of a photographer who can stray from the truth. How is reflected in these two images?

Acclaimed documentary filmmaker Morris in his book Believing is seeing offers a collection of fascinating investigative essays on documentary photography and its relation to reality. Arguing that photographs conceal as much as they reveal, Morris revisits historical but still passionately alive controversies (like accusations of photographers working for the Depression-era Farm Security Administration staging scenes) as well as modern ones (newswire photos of children's toys, for instance, shot among the rubble of Israel-bombed southern Lebanon). Indeed, one chapter expands on the filmmaker's own Standard Operating Procedure (2008), a documentary examining the Abu Ghraib scandal through an interrogation of its now iconic photographs (Donna, 2011). Morris begins with a brilliant opening chapter--a template and touchstone for what follows, a case study in the history of documentary photography: Roger Fenton's two 1855 images of The Valley ...