Even before my recent romp through the Susan Sontag wonderland of On Photography, I was a devout photoskeptic (who happens to enjoy taking photos—go figure). This little item at Slate is worth a brief meditation. It concerns a photo of five New Yorkers seated in various casual postures, talking calmly at the water’s edge as the twin towers of the World Trade Center in the background belch smoke into a crisp blue September afternoon. As reported by Slate, Frank Rich of the New York Times wrote that he found the image “shocking” and suggested that the people depicted were “relaxing” and were already “mov[ing] on” from the attacks. Today one of the people in the picture described how the five had come to be where they were, what they were talking about, and how they felt. “A snapshot can make mourners attending a funeral look like they’re having a party,” he said. Indeed. It is particularly suspicious that they were not glued to their television sets.
Rich usually gets things pretty much right, but here he was guessing, and it seems he guessed quite wrongly. One lesson here is that, even when a photo seems to provide enough context, it often (always?) does not. The world is a seeming place, but it responds and opens itself up to patient probing. Photography continually enchants us into thinking otherwise—that the world can be captured unequivocally in a moment.
