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Monday, March 17, 2008 12:00 AM

How photos support your own "reality"

Why do 9/11 deniers see an alternative story in pictures of the attacks? Because we all interpret images according to our biases.

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  • Sunday, March 16, 2008 07:30 PM

    Not exactly breaking news

    Historians have been grappling with the issues raised in this excerpt for decades involving how we interpret documents and construct narratives about the past. Differences in interpretation persist no matter how many new documents are produced or how close to the present they were created. Historians disagree as much about the 1990s as the 1790s.

    Only the most naive would think that photographs can make something definitively true; photos and video are merely new kinds of documents that people will disagree on. There is nothing particularly special about the biases and interpretation of visual media that we haven't already been dealing with for generations.

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