"All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth"

A photograph records light faithfully at a particular moment, a precise slice of appearances. It is accurate in the way a footprint is accurate: it corresponds to something that happened, shaped by the contact between world and surface. Yet accuracy is not the same as truth. The moment chosen, the angle adopted, the lens selected, the exposure set, the background arranged, the subject’s awareness of the camera, all of these decisions determine what is shown and what is left out. A single frame cannot accommodate the before and after, the motives of the people in it, the wider social and historical forces that give an image its meaning.

Portraiture makes this clear. Sitters present selves they want to be seen, and photographers stage or strip away context to direct our attention. A face on a white background can feel revelatory, but it is also a reduction, the subtraction of environment that might contradict or complicate what we think we see. Documentary images, too, are shaped by selection and sequencing: the crop, the caption, and the page layout can draw one conclusion from a scene while another is possible. No fraud is required for a photograph to mislead; the narrowness of the frame does the work.

Truth demands context, continuity, and the possibility of contradiction. It is relational, built from multiple perspectives and forms of evidence. Photographs can contribute powerfully to that assemblage, but they cannot, by themselves, deliver it. The danger lies in mistaking the authority of the visual for completeness, especially now, when digital manipulation is easy and ubiquitous. The responsibility falls on makers and viewers alike: to ask what stands just outside the frame, whose story is being foregrounded, and what corroborates or challenges what we see. Photographs are invaluable witnesses; their testimony is real. But truth remains a larger, messier verdict, reached only when images are situated within a broader inquiry.