Documentary filmmaker Errol Morris possesses a wonderfully eccentric and obsessive mind. He's a better filmmaker than writer (arguably among the most innovative auteurs to work in nonfiction), but what saves this treatise on photography from being overly pedantic is his willingness to explore tangents and linger over salient details. Some are humorous. But many more are chilling—like the photograph of leg irons and hobbling chains used to torture orphans of the American Civil War. When Morris floats the specter of Lewis Carroll's Cheshire Cat over Abu Ghraib, the reader's blood runs cold.

Morris remains a hard-core skeptic, a self-proclaimed "secular anti-humanist." Here his thoughts are pointed: Photographs generally offer more questions than answers. And what seems obvious at a glance dissolves when rigorously investigated.

One case study, the "Cheshire Cat"—an outgrowth of Morris' research on the Abu Ghraib photographs for his film Standard Operating Procedure—delves into the meaning of the "thumbs-up" photo of Sabrina Harman. (The photograph, one of the most notorious of the scandal, showed a smiling U.S. soldier mugging above a dead Iraqi "detainee.") We learn that Harman's smile is a "social smile" and doesn't signal genuine enjoyment. Considering this, along with other evidence, a contrary assessment of Harman emerges to counter the misleading first impression left by the infamous photograph. Believing Is Seeing contextualizes this misconception and situates it within the history of photography.

—Douglas Vuncannon

Originally published by The Independently Weekly as part of the piece, "What our writers are reading."