Synopses & Reviews
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.
Review
"
Believing Is Seeing is an important book: It reminds us, at a time when it is remarkably easy to manipulate images and we are daily inundated with more and more of them, to ask: 'What, after all, are we looking at?'"
-Wall Street Journal
"[A]n 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."
-Los Angeles Times
"Morris' assiduous and profound inquiry into the relationship between reality and photography is eye-opening, mind-expanding, and essential in this age of ubiquitous digital images."
-Booklist (starred review)
"[Morris], known for films such as The Thin Blue Line and The Fog of War, is a truth-teller, skilled at using filmic and photographic evidence to reveal truth and innocence. Here he interrogates the truth-or not-of images iconic and scarcely known."
-Kirkus
Review
"Morris's book is beautifully designed, underscoring that visual evidence has its own texture, its own feel. Like Arbus, Morris knows that photographs gratify some of our deep cravings, but also that they also never fully satisfy. A photograph "partially takes us outside ourselves" and "gives us a glimpse . . . of something real." This is a key part of what Arbus and Morris are both after.
Photography's preservation of traces of the past offers the possibility that "we too can be saved from oblivion by an image that reaches beyond our lives." By paying such close and caring attention to traces of the past, Morris greatly increases the possibility of their living on. He shows us what it means to do the hard work of saving memories from oblivion."
-Michael Roth, The Washington Post
"Morris brings an insatiable and contagious curiosity throughout to the convolutions that arise between art and truth telling."
-Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"...Morris's book feels less like traditional photography criticism than like the novels of W. G. Sebald, which are similarly obsessed with truth, memory and war. We get odd, absorbing pictures of Mayan ruins, of Picasso and his mistress, of the high heels worn by Morris's tour guide in Crimea: shanks, shoes, a shadow (presumably the photographer's) falling across the once boot-trodden road. Like extra problem sets in a textbook, these photos offer us additional opportunities to practice the art of looking, while simultaneously multiplying the scale of, as Morris's subtitle puts it, 'the mysteries of photography.'"
-New York Times Book Review
"Believing Is Seeing is an important book: It reminds us, at a time when it is remarkably easy to manipulate images and we are daily inundated with more and more of them, to ask: 'What, after all, are we looking at?'"
-Wall Street Journal
"[A]n 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."
-Los Angeles Times
"Delightfully conversational..."
-Boston Globe
"...simultaneously bewildering and thrilling, like finding a fathomless secret world hidden behind the seeming simplicity of everyday life."
-Salon
"Morris' assiduous and profound inquiry into the relationship between reality and photography is eye-opening, mind-expanding, and essential in this age of ubiquitous digital images."
-Booklist (starred review)
"Students of photography-and fans of CSI-will find this a provocative, memorable book..."
-Kirkus Reviews
Review
"Morris's book is beautifully designed, underscoring that visual evidence has its own texture, its own feel. Like Arbus, Morris knows that photographs gratify some of our deep cravings, but also that they also never fully satisfy. A photograph "partially takes us outside ourselves" and "gives us a glimpse . . . of something real." This is a key part of what Arbus and Morris are both after.
Photography's preservation of traces of the past offers the possibility that "we too can be saved from oblivion by an image that reaches beyond our lives." By paying such close and caring attention to traces of the past, Morris greatly increases the possibility of their living on. He shows us what it means to do the hard work of saving memories from oblivion." -Michael Roth, The Washington Post
Review
and#8220;Through charming anecdotes, Grenier blends his own history with that of photography, and explains how the medium has influenced his entire life. He begins with early photographic history and its practitioners and smoothly weaves these histories into his own memories. However, since Grenier developed film in his familyand#8217;s pharmacy-cum-photo lab, his connection to photography goes well beyond mere appreciation. . . . Recommended for those who practice or appreciate photography and its history.and#8221;
Review
"Delightful. . . . This short book--just over a hundred pages and illustrated with snapshots--contains multitudes."
Synopsis
An extraordinary, timely update on the classic Coleridge poemIs it possible to update a masterpiece? Only, perhaps, with a brand-new masterpiece. Written in 1797, andldquo;The Rime of the Ancient Marinerandrdquo; was the original eco-fable; drawn in 2010, The Rime of the Modern Mariner is a graphic novel, now set in the cesspool of the North Atlantic Garbage Patchandmdash;thus adding a timely and resonant message about the destruction of our seas.
Hayesandrsquo;s visually striking debut is drawn with complex, iconic images reminiscent of old woodcuts. Emerging from every exquisite page are the poemandrsquo;s enduring themes: compassion for nature, a sense of connection among all living things, and rightful outrage at manandrsquo;s thoughtless destruction of the environment. Powerful and evocative, lush and stark, The Rime of the Modern Mariner will appeal to fans of Habibi and Persepolis.
Synopsis
Academy Awardwinning director Errol Morris turns his eye to the nature of truth in photography In his inimitable style, Errol Morris untangles the mysteries behind an eclectic range of documentary photographs. With his keen sense of irony, skepticism, and humor, Morris shows how photographs can obscure as much as they reveal, and how what we see is often determined by our beliefs. Each essay in this book is part detective story, part philosophical meditation, presenting readers with a conundrum, and investigates the relationship between photographs and the real world they supposedly record. Believing Is Seeing is a highly original exploration of photography and perception, from one of Americas most provocative observers.
Synopsis
Academy Awardand#150;winning director Errol Morris turns his eye to the nature of truth in photography In his inimitable style, Errol Morris untangles the mysteries behind an eclectic range of documentary photographs. With his keen sense of irony, skepticism, and humor, Morris shows how photographs can obscure as much as they reveal, and how what we see is often determined by our beliefs. Each essay in this book is part detective story, part philosophical meditation, presenting readers with a conundrum, and investigates the relationship between photographs and the real world they supposedly record. Believing Is Seeing is a highly original exploration of photography and perception, from one of Americaand#8217;s most provocative observers.
Synopsis
Most attempts to generalize about photography as a medium run up against our experience of the photographs themselves. We live with photos and cameras every day, and philosophies of the photographic image do little to shake our intimate sense of how we produce photographs and what they mean to us. In this book that is equal parts memoir and intellectual and cultural history, French writer Roger Grenier contemplates the ways that photography can change the course of a life, reflecting along the way on the history of photography and its practitioners.and#160;Unfolding in brief, charming vignettes, A Box of Photographs evokes Grenierandrsquo;s childhood in Pau, his war years, and his working life at the Gallimard publishing house in Paris. Throughout these personal stories, Grenier subtly weaves the story of a lifetime of practicing and thinking about photography and its heroesandmdash;Henri Cartier-Bresson, Weegee, Alfred Eisenstaedt, George Brassaandiuml;, Inge Morath, and others. Adding their own insights about photography to the narrative are a striking range of writers, thinkers, and artists, from Lewis Carroll, Albert Camus, and Arthur Schopenhauer to Susan Sontag, Edgar Degas, and Eugandegrave;ne Delacroix. Even cameras themselves come to life and take on personalities: an Agfa accompanies Grenier on grueling military duty in Algeria, a Voigtlander almost gets him killed by German soldiers during the liberation of Paris, and an ill-fated Olympus drowns in a boating accident. Throughout, Grenier draws us into the private life of photographs, seeking the secrets they hold for him and for us.and#160;A valedictory salute to a lost world of darkrooms, proofs, and the gummed paper corners of old photo albums, A Box of Photographs is a warm look at the most honest of lifeandrsquo;s mirrors.
About the Author
Roger Grenier, an editor at Éditions Gallimard, has published over thirty novels, short stories, and literary essays and is the recipient of numerous prizes, including the Grand Prix de Littéature de l'Académie Française.Alice Kaplan is the author of French Lessons: A Memoir, The Collaborator, The Interpreter, and Dreaming in French: The Paris Years of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, Susan Sontag, and Angela Davis, and the translator of OK, Joe, The Difficulty of Being a Dog, A Box of Photographs, and Palace of Books. Her books have been twice nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Awards, once for the National Book Award, and she is a winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She holds the John M. Musser chair in French literature at Yale. She lives in Guilford, Connecticut.
Table of Contents
and#8220;Talking about photography . . .and#8221;and#160;Posing for Portraits
Baby Box
Agfa
A Summer in the Lab
Negative of a Nude
All Thatand#8217;s Left Is the Smile
Because of a Leica
A New Agfa
Backlighting
On the Tand#233;land#233;phand#233;rique
A Photo of the Train Station at Tarbes
The Poor Manand#8217;s Rollei
A Victim of Heidegger
The Curse of the Voigtland#228;nder
Another Woman and a Leica
One of the Fine Arts
Colors
Forcing
The Jar
Charles Dullinand#8217;s Bedroom
Saint-Germain-des-Prand#233;s
The Saxophonist
Destinies
One, Two, Three!
The Canon and the Photographer
Atrocities
The Beach at Ostia
An Angel of the Streets
News Photos
Gisand#232;leand#8217;s Grudge
Police Interference
To Each His Photographer
An Official Image
A Source
In Exile
The Swan Song of the Olympus
Of Dogs and Goats
The Dialectic of the Portraitand#160;Translatorand#8217;s Note
Translatorand#8217;s Acknowledgments