We suspend our disbelief in the most preposterous plots precisely because of that grounding in photographed reality, a documented truth, that is the definition of the medium.
There is no documented truth to the theory that months of pitiless snowstorms, weeks of subzero wind chills and an early April dose of sleet that froze the dog's feet to the sidewalk now guarantee that the 2011 golf season will be the best and most satisfying ever.
Some things can be so painful or traumatic that factual, documented truths are discarded and minds are sucked into half-baked conspiratorial versions.
I began to disregard some of my earlier feelings about photography, the way that photography worked and notions of documenting truth and representation, and having to take a new position of not caring so much about what was what and where it came from.
They're writers dedicated to documenting truth – weight, location of purchase, probable quantity of MDMA per pill – and legend – the who's, the where's, the what happened's.
In my ongoing quest of documenting truth, I look to continually challenge assumptions, find new sources of information, and seek common ground on important social issues in hopes to transcend knee-jerk obstructionism.
Knowing this, I can't help wondering if "Believing Is Seeing" is the first installment in a three-volume attempt to make sense of the relationship between the documentarian, the documented and the truth.
When Treadwell took the 47-year-old lawyer to task, Miller defended his stance, calling the document "the truth" and "real-world stuff".
Earlier this week, we made note of BP CEO Bob Dudley's complaint that the media, in their routine efforts to document the truth about what was happening in the Gulf of Mexico, had created such a gigantic "climate of fear" that he had no other choice but to wage a widespread campaign to harass and intimidate reporters.
"We perceive [the arrests] as a retaliation and persecution for documenting the truth," they said.
