Looking through a lens

One 9/11 picture, thousands of words: Rorschach of meanings.

. . . their simplistic reading of the image, however mistaken in the view of those in it, is more naïve than malicious. Their translation is not absurd and can be supported by elements in the image. The meanings of photographs are inherently unstable. Without captions to nail down who, what, why, where, when, they tend to drift away into the inscrutable oblivion--one reason the medium was so beloved by the surrealists.

By Richard B Woodward: Wall Street Journal