Errol Morris: Believing Is Seeing (Observations on the Mysteries of Photography)

Posted by Maximum Fun on 5th September 2011

What does this photograph suggest to you? If I told you that it was taken in South Dakota in 1936 by a man named Arthur Rothstein who was working for the Farm Security Administration, would that impact your answer? This picture was quite a source of social and political controversy in its day as many felt it had been posed to raise sympathy and support for FDR’s programs. So what is this work of art, really? A meditation on light and form? Straightforward documentation of farm and weather conditions? Or subtle propaganda?

One man who has a unique talent for getting to the bottom of mysteries like this is filmmaker Errol Morris. His new book, “Believing Is Seeing (Observations on the Mysteries of Photography)”, contains a series of essays that investigate the hidden truths behind a series of documentary photographs. Including this one.

The review from the LA Times summarizes it beautifully, saying: “[A]t its core . . .”Believing Is Seeing” is an elegantly conceived and ingeniously constructed work of cultural psycho-anthropology wrapped around a warning about the dangers of drawing inferences about the motives of photographers based on the split-second snapshots of life that they present to us. It’s also a cautionary lesson for navigating a world in which, more and more, we fashion our notions of truth from the flickering apparitions dancing before our eyes.”