What You See Isn’t Always What You Get

I love mysteries, especially about photographs, and this is a real doozy.

I’m talking about a wonderful column by filmmaker Errol Morris posted on The New York Times web site about two famous war photographs (which are reproduced in the column).

The photographs were taken by Roger Fenton during the Crimean War along a road in a place soldiers call the Valley of the Shadow of Death. One of those photos, which is an important early iconic war image, shows dozens of cannon balls littering an empty road; the other, taken from the same tripod position by the same photographer, shows a road with no cannon balls.

Since Fenton never gave the order of the photos, a lot of critics and photography experts have weighed in on the photo order. In an essay in her last book, Susan Sontag wrote that the photo of the balls on the road was staged, specifically, she writes, “before taking the second picture – the one that is always reproduced – he oversaw the scattering of the cannonballs on the road itself.”

Sontag’s assertion that Fenton staged the cannon balls on the road photo is what you might assume at first glance. But as Morris talks to other experts and takes us further into the story, we find that the truth might be more elusive than it appears.

One thing that bothers me about many bloggers on the 9/11 Truth movement sites is their assertion that because the fall of the World Trade Center buildings looks like a demolition, it is a demolition. As Morris carefully points out, what you see isn’t always what you get.