QUESTION: What is the difference among these three photographs?

Graphic by Dan Mooney for Errol Morris/ Photographs by Ben Curtis/ Associated Press

Errol Morris on photography.

ANSWER: There is no difference. The photographs are the same, although the captions are different. But the photograph on the left can be seen as photo-journalism, the photograph in the middle as anti-Israeli propaganda, and the photograph on the right as anti-Hezbollah propaganda.

Imagine three captions. The caption under the picture on the left reads as follows:

A child’s toy lies amidst broken glass from the shattered windows of an apartment block near those that were demolished by Israeli air strikes in Tyre, southern Lebanon, Monday, Aug. 7, 2006. Israeli bombs slammed into a complex of buildings flattening four multistoried apartment blocks, including the one apartment that had been the target of Saturday’s Israeli commando raid, whilst a civil defense ambulance was hit in the rear and slightly damaged with emergency workers who had gone to the bomb site to search for bodies being forced to flee. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)

This is the actual caption that appeared with the photograph as distributed by the Associated Press.

The caption under the picture in the middle reads:

A child’s toy lies amidst broken glass from the shattered windows of an apartment block near those that were demolished by Israeli air strikes in Tyre, southern Lebanon, Monday, Aug. 7, 2006. Israeli bombs slammed into a complex of buildings flattening four multistoried apartment blocks, including the one apartment that had been the target of Saturday’s Israeli commando raid, whilst a civil defense ambulance was hit in the rear and slightly damaged with emergency workers who had gone to the bomb site to search for bodies being forced to flee. It is an illustration of a tactic employed by the Israeli Defense Forces to target civilians in southern Lebanon.

The line in boldface changes how we look at the photograph.

The caption under the picture on the right reads:

A child’s toy lies amidst broken glass from the shattered windows of an apartment block near those that were demolished by Israeli air strikes in Tyre, southern Lebanon, Monday, Aug. 7, 2006. Israeli bombs slammed into a complex of buildings flattening four multistoried apartment blocks, including the one apartment that had been the target of Saturday’s Israeli commando raid, whilst a civil defense ambulance was hit in the rear and slightly damaged with emergency workers who had gone to the bomb site to search for bodies being forced to flee. It is an illustration of a tactic employed by Hezbollah and Hamas to use their own civilians as human shields.

Once again, the line in boldface changes how we look at the photograph.

The photograph remains the same, the accompanying text (and possibly also our beliefs about the photograph) changes. This explains why we we should be sensitive about how photographs are presented. Changes in captions can radically alter how we see a photograph and what it means.