"Trusting the photograph was probably a huge mistake from the beginning." Particularly in the days before photoshop and other doctoring methods, when the art was still new, photos seemed like irrefutable proof that whatever they depicted was true. The main problem with photographs has always been not that they can be edited or staged, but that even an unchanged snapshot shows only a single moment of a single side of any issue. A photo that aims to show that everything is well in a city through scenes of its most beautiful buildings and parks is not necessarily lying, as there are people who live in the luxury it depicts. However, what it does not show are the run down places right outside of those areas where people live in poverty. A series of war photographs may show victories that did happen, but leave out the photos of soldiers returning in caskets. There is no way to tell, simply from looking at a photo, what was happening right outside the frame.