Believing Is Seeing:
Observations on the Mysteries of Photography
Errol Morris
Penguin Press, 2011
7.5 x 9.4 inches, 336 pages

Designed at Pentagram
under the direction of Michael Bierut

Believing is Seeing, by the Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Errol Morris, contains six fascinating essays organized into three sections, all investigating the possibility of truth in photography. Morris scrutinizes a series of famous documentary photographs—from the Crimean War and American Civil War through the recent war in Lebanon—to elucidate both their hidden meanings and the relationship between the visual artifacts and the real world we believe they represent.

The book weaves together running narrative, interviews, and an abundance of visual materials including photographs, artifacts, diagrams, and timelines. It invites the reader to engage with the narrative and visual material as a participant in Morris’s process of discovery.