Believing is Seeing
“They say that seeing is believing. But the opposite is true. Believing is seeing."
"I may focus your attention on a small and perhaps irrelevant detail, which I think is not so irrelevant. But there’s always an imposition of point of view in anything. There’s this crazy thinking that style guarantees truth. You go out with a hand-held camera, use available light, and somehow the truth emerges."
“The only thing I do that’s different from other people is I call attention to the fact that I have a point of view. I call attention to the fact that how we see, what we see, is constructed, and that looking at how it’s constructed is often a useful exercise.
“I think people want the appearance of truth. They don’t necessarily want the truth.”
~ Errol Morris, discussing his new film, Standard Operating Procedure in "Of Crime and Perception at Abu Ghraib," (New York Times, 4/20/08)
- The film's companion book comes out May 15
- "Exposure," by Phillip Gourevitch and Errol Morris, The New Yorker (3/03/08) The woman behind the camera at Abu Ghraib.
- Zoom, New York Times blog written by Errol Morris
- Regarding the Pain of Others (2003) by Susan Sontag
