Morris's "Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire" Unit 2-Post 8

To be honest, when I first saw the title of Morris's article, "Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire" I didn't think that I would be reading a piece that simply argued wether or not a picture is lying.  The relationships I understood the author to be noting between images and beliefs were a bit confusing when I started reading his article.  He first notes receiving photographs taken decades ago by his father, who has already passed.  Feeling disconnected from the pictures even though he was present in some, in a way, Morris mentions that if it was not his own family he wouldn't be able to connect stories to those images.  But throughout the rest of the piece Morris harps on the theory that if an image is absent of a caption or at times a story, it can not be determined if the image is true or false.  The author provides us with a picture of a ship in a body of water, free of a caption. He then adds that, "a caption less photograph, stripped of all context, is virtually meaningless." (Morris)  I completely disagree with his opinion on this matter.  Given the picture from the article, once can conclude that there is someone either on another boat or a piece of land taking the picture.  One can also make the point that the boat is in operation and that it has passengers on it; due to the fact that there is smoke coming out of the boat along with people on the deck.  Next, Morris adds a caption, "Lusitania," which is the name of the boat.  With the caption, one can add another piece of information to the image.  Finally, the author supplies the reader with a story, and several images that are connected to the original picture along with stories.  Now that we have been provided with stories to connect the image to, there is a full story behind it.

I found an example of Morris's ideas and my disagreement with his ideas in an article from the New York Times called "Chavez Returns to Venezuela, Trailing Doubts."  The picture that is used in the beginning of the article shows us a woman wearing a Venezuelan hat and the national color, red, while other people dressed in red hold up a picture of the nation's leader, Chavez in front of a hospital.  After you read the story you can see the connection that the people in the pictures are people that support the return of the dictator.