Thoughts on "Seeing Isn't Always Believing"

Truth.
Well, truth's a funny thing.
I suppose this issue really depends on what kind of truth an artist or an audience desires or requires. Historical truth, personal truth, visual truth...There are different truths. It also depends on whether you want or value truth over belief. People will tend to have faith in a photograph, because it is a like a tangible visible piece of the world at a moment in time, but even an un-tampered photograph may not be "true" simply by representing something instantaneous within a certain spatial frame.
It's just another version of the fiction/fact argument.

A couple of quotes concerning truth/belief/fiction come to mind. I think they are worth consideration, though they don't concern photography directly. The first is from the film Secondhand Lions:

"Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things a man needs to believe in the most. That people are basically good; that honor, courage, and virtue mean everything; that power and money, money and power mean nothing...Doesn't matter if it's true or not. You see, a man should believe in those things because those are the things worth believing in."

I also am reminded of the seventh chapter of Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried.

The Things They Carried is set up as a novel with twenty two chapters, however, many of these chapters were first published separately as short stories; O’Brien later combined them for the book. All its subject matter discusses or directly refers to the Vietnam War—sometimes the war itself, or sometimes its affect on those involved afterwards—which presumably he derived from his own and others’ experiences during the war. A note preceding the novel says, “This is a work of fiction. Except for a few details regarding the author’s own life, all the incidents, names and characters are imaginary.” As O’Brien explains in “How to Tell a True War Story,” and reiterates throughout the novel, things that never actually happened, what is called “fiction” can, in fact, be truer than any “truth.” He admits that many of the things he wrote about didn’t actually happen necessarily the way he wrote them, if at all, but they’re true. (That’s his take on “fiction.”)

            “For example, we’ve all heard this one. Four guys go down a trail. A grenade sails out. One guy jumps on it and takes the blast and saves his three buddies.
            Is it true?
            The answer matters. 
            You’d feel cheated if it never happened. . .  a true war story does not depend upon that kind of truth. Absolute occurrence is irrelevant. A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth. For example: Four guys go down a trail. A grenade sails out. One guy jumps on it and takes the blast, but it’s a killer grenade and everybody dies anyway. Before they die though, one of the dead guys says, “The fuck you do that for?” and the jumper says, “Story of my life, man,” and the other guy starts to smile but he’s dead. 
            That’s a true war story that never happened”