Is Seeing Believing: Recommended Books

The victor’s account of history may be the one that is recorded, but photojournalism
still has the power to undermine the official version. Such is the corrective testimony
of this startling collection of banned, suppressed or conveniently forgotten news images
depicting moments from the last century where the propaganda needs of politicians,
despots and stars clashed with sometimes awkward, sometimes horrifying truths.
Incorporating images and text from the Index On Censorship and the Hulton Getty
Picture Collection, the images represent a reality check on alleged events from the
last hundred years, documenting a power struggle with rival cultural forces of media
and information. Reclaimed from the trash cans of the Second World War, Hitler’s
preening speech rehearsals come back to argue with his self-made myth. From the
cruelty of Stalin’s Russia to fundamentalist chaos in Iran, via disgruntled starlets,
ecological destruction and US nuclear tests, Underexposed gathers some of the
most ideologically dangerous photographs ever taken and releases them to haunt
the increasingly manipulated, retouched present. With an incisive forward by Colin
Jacobson, the book is a seminal work for all those curious about what lies beneath
the last century’s layers of spin.