Photographic Truthiness

This is not the Lusitania

Documentary filmmaker, Errol Morris, who directed one of my all time favorite movies, Fast, Cheap, & Out of Control, takes up the debate about photography and truth in a blog article in today's New York Times:

The idea that photographs hand us an objective piece of reality, that they by themselves provide us with the truth, is an idea that has been with us since the beginnings of photography. But photographs are neither true nor false in and of themselves. They are only true or false with respect to statements that we make about them or the questions that we might ask of them.

I agree with his thesis, but, frankly, I am tired of the conversation and endless debate about what photography is and what photography is not. Truth versus fiction. Staged versus real. Synthetic versus straight.

Ay de mi!

Can we move past this, people? Can we accept that the only true definition of photography is the process of capturing images using light? Let's stop navel gazing and make some damn pictures already.