Believing Is Seeing

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Errol Morris

Penguin, New York, 2011, English

Nonfiction, Photography

7.36 x 9.25 inches, hardcover, 336 pages

ISBN: 9781594203015

Suggested Retail Price: $40.00

From the Publisher: 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. 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.

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Julie Lasky

On Julie Lasky’s Notable Books of 2011 list

This collection of Morris’s Opinionator columns for the New York Times website is fascinating on multiple levels. Read it for the fresh perspective it offers on the timeless debate over photography’s value as a tool of revelation versus distortion, of consciousness-raising versus manipulation. Or read it to get into the mind of a truth seeker who has no tolerance for intellectual flabbiness or emotion-driven responses. (But don’t hang around there too long. It’s kind of scary.) If nothing else, read this book for Morris’s relentless quest to get to the bottom of the mystery surrounding two Roger Fenton photos of a cannonball-littered landscape in the Crimea. You may never again make another easy assumption.

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