September 17, 2008  

“The War on Terror will be photographed.” – Standard Operating Procedure

“Photographs become iconic for a reason.” – Errol Morris

Can a photograph change America’s perception of itself? Do photographs inspire us to “dig deeper” or encourage us to look the other way? Oscar-winning filmmaker Errol Morris addressed these questions regarding the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal and larger issues of American foreign policy during a visit last May to the Global Media Seminar taught by James Der Derian and John Phillip Santos. The interview with Morris, whose recent film, Standard Operating Procedure, documents the scandal, is available here, on Christopher Lydon's Open Source website.

Morris’s previous credits include The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons From the Life of Robert S. McNamara, which won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2004 and included Watson faculty members James G. Blight and janet M. Lang as principal substantive advisors. Morris is also known for directing Gates of Heaven (1978), Vernon, Florida (1981) The Thin Blue Line (1988), A Brief History of Time (1992), and Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control (1997). Currently, Morris also contributes to the New York Times Online via his blog, Zoom, which focuses on the deconstruction of film and photography.