What ya sees, and what ya snaps …

… Photography’s Chattering Ghosts . (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Why do we trust, or distrust, photographs? What are the forces that exist behind these images and why do they command such authority? Is it the subject of the photograph, or the photographic technology itself that commands this reverence? These questions, which have been debated for at least a century, lie at the heart of the medium’s history. These are the problems of photography, the sources of its central contradiction. From the beginning, the medium has had a fickle status: it’s been, at once, a tool of science and a tool of art; a servant ofobjective fact, and a creator of subjective experience.