Photographs Do Lie

[S. Wang]

Please check it out.

Photographs Do Lie Why his Pulitzer-winning picture of a South Vietnamese general haunted Eddie Adams for the rest of his life. by Duncan Currie



http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/666noxlw.asp

[chris jordan]

"Without background or context, readers saw a merciless Loan [the guy with the gun] and a defenseless Lop [the guy with his hands tied who has just been shot through the head at point-blank range]. "

Hmmmm, I read the article and that's still exactly what I see. Is there something I am missing here? What about this photo is a lie?

[todd roseman]

Great article. The point is that the photo's a half-truth. You don't see the people that Lop killed - what that looked like.

Maybe it's not the photo that's a lie, it's how it was used. Telling a half-truth using this photo.

[Chris Gittins]

If you're looking for lies and half-truths, The Weekly Standard is a goldmine.

[Darin Boville]

There is a film version of the same scene--I don't think it has sound. I saw it in high school, way back when. The most shocking/suprising thing to me in the film version was the apparent lack of build-up to the shooting. The prisoner is just standing there, the General is sort of talking to others (maybe the journalists?) and then, whamo, he raises his arm and fires. Quite unexpected from the viewer's point of view.

Isn't the Adams' photo cropped? I believe it had more of the same sort of framing that the film version had.

--Darin

www.darinboville.com

[Paul Kierstead]

Actually, I think it is the most useful kind of photograph; it is what it is. Sure you don't know the histories, or the acts of cruelty or kindness each has done; you don't even know necessarily why. If the photographer had instead been a writer, he may have given us a view much more heavily colored by his opinion; instead, we are left to decide for ourselves. It is an accurate depiction of the event; what it portends is one of the larger moral questions of our society. The photographers opinion is quite irrelevant.

[Robert J Cardon]

Great comments. The "trouble" photos is that they present only a snapshop of reality (and even this is edited) at an instance in time. They can be compelling indeed, and are useful as such. But they are less useful for gaining a comprehsive view of a situation/history. What isn't in the photo can be just as, or more, important than the image itself, e.g., you don't see what lead up to the moment the shutter was snapped. To me the whole needs to be considered, e.g., you can take compelling, evokative images of death row/executions, but unless they are offest by images of the victims as they were being murdered, you don't have the whole story.

RJ

[domenico Foschi]

Photographs can liie, yes,....but in this case all adams did was to release the trigger few nanoseconds after the general released his. The thing that this self tortured man( Adams ) probably didn't give too much importance , was what i consider the most important thing about the image : the expression in the general face .., just as if he had stepped on an ant. I have seen the footage of the incident , and it froze me to see the "nonchalanche" and speed it all happened with. It reminded me of some scenes in Shindler's list.... Adams did a great service to humanity to click the trigger. If war makes you so callous to become a killing machine and have total disregard for sanctity of human life then you shouldn't be in one.

[Capocheny]

I think Wang's use of the title to the posting may not have been the best or most accurate description of what he was trying to convey. Perhaps, the title might have been better if it were something like, "Another Side to the Photograph."

My interpretation of this whole posting is that Wang was suggesting that there, oftentimes, is another side to a photograph, which should lead us to ask more questions about the image. It's important that we realize that we shouldn't always take things at face value because there may be more than what meets the eye.

Lastly, this is not to say that we necessarily NEED to question everything that we see/hear but it's also not wise to ALWAYS accept things at face value either.

Cheers

[John Kasaian]

While I never met him, until his death General Loan lived not too far from me. Eddie Adam's recent passing brought about a discussion with a friend of mine, a local attorney who found this thread on a blog that has links to a couple of interviews by Eddie Adams published both in the Weekly Standard and elsewhere. FWIW it might be interesting if you're...you're... you're...you're...well...interested in what Adams had to say(got to get a handle on my stuttering!)