Question Everything

Renowned documentary filmmaker Errol Morris (The Thin Blue Line, The Fog of War, Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.) has a blog over at the New York Times called Zoom that is dedicated to uncovering the "hidden truth of photos." Today's entry, apart from being a fascinating mystery in and off itself, contains an interesting lesson about how to treat received wisdom.

At issue is this photo:


It's called "Valley of the Shadow of Death," by Roger Fenton. It was taken in 1855 during the Crimean War. It is one of the first famous photographs of war, taken at a time when photographers traveled with horse-drawn mobile black rooms.

The issue is that there's another photo of the same location, taken on the same day, which shows the road clear of cannon balls (see the blog post for it). Morris's curiosity was piqued when he read in Susan Sontag's Regarding the Pain of Others that the two photos showed that the more famous one - with the cannon balls in the road - had been staged by Fenton and was therefore "fake" in some sense.

Although there's a lively discussion of whether that's true or not (and some painstaking analysis in the comments), that's not really what grabbed me about the piece. What grabbed me is that Morris was presented with a piece of received wisdom - that Fenton staged the photo - which is certainly plausible and believable, although there was no hard proof presented. Rather than sit back and accept that "fact" uncritically, Morris asked "why would he do that?" and "what's your proof?" That lead Morris into a lengthy series of interviews with various photographic experts and, eventually, a trip to the Crimean in pursuit of the truth.

What's the moral? For me, at least, it's be skeptical. Something isn't true or right or accurate just because someone with some authority/credibility says so. Look behind the claim. Don't take it on faith. You never know where you'll end up.