About

An anthropologist journeyed deep into the Amazon Rainforest to make contact with indigenous people who the whites had not yet encountered. Eventually he found a tribe who knew only of the forest and its people. They had never seen a white person or knew of their technologies. With his Polaroid camera, he took a portrait in profile of a woman and in a few minutes gave her the photograph. She and all the women vehemently argued with him, insisting that the photograph could not be of her, since she had two eyes, not one.

My neighbor in Jerusalem in the early 70′s was a staff reporter for a major American weekly magazine. Since there had not been any violence to report for some time, he grew anxious about losing his job there. He called a photographer to shoot the neighborhood kids pelting a retarded man with rocks while the man sat in a vacant lot littered with broken furniture and other cast off items. The photographer was then instructed to shoot from various angles to avoid revealing that the people throwing rocks were kids.

A few days later I heard him through the wall calling in his story....”Skirmishes in Jerusalem today over....”

Just what can or cannot be seen with a photograph?

I’m hooked.