Friday, October 26, 2007

Adult as Inquirer, or, where did those cannonballs come from?

Don't miss the three-part blog report in the New York Times by Errol Morris which documents his investigation into two photos taken during the Crimean War of "The Valley of the Shadow of Death".

“You mean to tell me that you went all the way to the Crimea because of one sentence written by Susan Sontag?” My friend Ron Rosenbaum seemed incredulous. I told him, “No, it was actually two sentences.”

So begins the tale of how Morris, a documentary filmmaker, is intrigued by a statement by Sontag and subsequently seeks to prove which of two photographs was taken first -- theorizing along the way how and why the photographer might have changed what the camera shot. Though it may sound boring, it's not.

It's also exactly the kind of dogged inquiry that we want our students to experience....

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