I’m not really comfortable writing about The Truth, because it makes me feel self-conscious about being A Filmmaker, but my friend Andrew presented an interesting idea to me that I hadn’t considered previously (!).

China, Hush: Stories of China is a web site that Aviva sent to me and it is a bit off-putting to me because it’s so direct. Maybe the Green Reason is similarly direct, but in a very different direction. The photographer has an agenda and it’s very clear. Thank you for helping me to understand this, Andrew. Andrew pointed out to me that what is interesting about these photographs is the part that is not the subject of these photographs, but the background. The illustrative example which he gave me is to notice, for instance, the labels on the trash in the river, to tell a certain story about what is real and true about this environment. The photographer didn’t choose the labels on the trash containers, so his agenda is not a factor in this element, so it is more true. The picture of sewage on the Yellow River, for example, is blatant but also taken completely out of context. We don’t know anything about the environment in which this picture takes place. To see this photograph without knowing anything about the framework makes it less true–or, rather, we just know a lot less about it–because it is then left up to the viewer to fabricate the context, and the viewer has a bias: why is he looking at a web site titled “Amazing Pictures, Pollution in China” as opposed to one titled “Amazing Pictures, EE in China” or, “Amazing Pictures, Pollution on the Hudson River”?