After reading through the articles written by Morris I realized that he had a whole lot of time to do this research. Not only does he have a lot of time but the funds and passion to investigate the pictures as well. I personally wasn’t a fan of the articles but can see the process of how hard it can be to correctly dissect the pictures we are presented.

The first thing that I thought when I first saw the pictures was does it really matter if the photograph was staged or not?

ERROL MORRIS: a fake photograph is a photograph that’s been posed.

The entire point of a picture is to present viewers with an idea or emotion and whether the photo is staged, edited or photoshopped the importance is not what we see but how we feel about it. If Fenton had moved the balls into the road it was to present to us what he wanted us to see and that’s the only thing that matters.

In the case of “Photography as a weapon” we see how captions and photoshopping changes how we see images. Once again, we are presented “fake” pictures. Once again, it doesn’t matter how legitimate the pictures are. The point of the picture of the missiles was intended to present the idea that Iran has missiles. The fact that one misfired is irrelevant, simply because the threat is there in our minds that Iran has missiles that may or may not reach us.