A Picture's Worth a Million Interpretations

We are raised to believe books make us smarter, broaden our vocabulary and open our eyes to different viewpoints. What about the books that dare us to challenge the knowledge we have gained and force us to learn the messages behind words that describe how we act everyday? What about when we read to defy every viewpoint we have consciously and unconsciously come to believe in?

This is exactly what "True Enough" by Farhad Manjoo does, but not from one bias viewpoint, in the manner many issues are dealt with in our world today, but from every angle of every "what if," while giving each side a fair opportunity to plea it's case.

Manjoo has somehow separated the objective from the subjective to explain the effects of the two that we see, and live, in society everyday. Being a subjective person is something many people don’t want to admit but, as Manjoo says, "We all want objectivity, but we disagree about what objectivity is."

There is a topic in his book that I consider profound and would like to break apart from my own point of view and mere curiosity...

I've still in my head at this very moment the work of Ken Light, a photographer Manjoo writes about. Light believes it is "difficult to shake criticism that comes through a camera because people sense a deeper truth in photographs" but today, the faith we have in finding the truth in photos is slowly slipping away, thanks to the day and age of Adobe programs like Photoshop. It is easier than ever for anyone to distort a photo. I can personally say that my own experiences with Photoshop have never been ones I thought could change what I allow people to take from a photo, until now.

Light is most famous for his monographs including “Texas Death Row”, photos of men awaiting execution. I chose to talk about Light's photography because as Manjoo writes about the lack of accuracy even in our most trusted sources, being pictures, people still take many different angles from a single photo-even the most powerful pictures, like those taken by Light- distorted or not.

Manjoo quotes Hastorf and Cantril who said "It is inaccurate and misleading to say that different people have different 'attitudes' concerning the same thing, for the thing is simply not the same for different people." In this case, that thing being a photo.

While many people may see Light's photos of “Texas Death Row” as photos of monsters, men who have disregarded the worth of life by taking it away from others, I saw that, and more.

Light's photo of Glen McGinnis is of a young boy who is sentenced to death for murder. The photo is one of him on his 21^st birthday spent awaiting execution.

It’s hard, even as an aspiring journalist, to put what I felt when looking at this photo into words, but with some time sitting in my quiet apartment, this is what I took away…

I took away sorrow, pain, regret and a lot of darkness from this picture, a boy with a need for guidance. A future lossed, a family devasted... or a young boy who wished he had a family who cared about whether he spent another day alone waiting for death. I took away the feeling I had on my 21^st birthday, the excitement, the happiness. I took away how naïve I was at 21 to the pain and struggle in this world. I saw a life wasting away and lost to the streets of crime. I took away a feeling of wanting to change someone's life, because we never know what our words may do for someone in pain.

Someone else may take away a kid waiting to get exactly what he deserves to get-death. It’s hard to say if anyone ever deserves death, and who we are to decide this, but that is another blog for another time…

This picture is not for me what it may be for someone else, therefore already setting the platform for different interpretations, as Hastorf and Cantril mention earlier. Photography has always been intriguing to me and I could never explain exactly why, but Manjoo helped me understand that we all pull from photos a different viewpoint that is a part of who we are and how we view the world, and for that I must say, I’m grateful.