TheMay 15, 2007 clipping from the front page of the New York Times that Iused to create this piece includes a photograph taken by Palestinianphotographer Mohammed Abed. The caption reads “A Palestinian youthstanding near a burning vehicle today during clashes between politicalrivals Fatah and Hamas in Gaza City". Abed’s photograph can bedescribed as having three distinct focal points: 1) a blazing car onfire in the background, 2) a Palestinian teenage boy's intense facialexpression, and 3) the boy’s surprisingly clean, sky blue St. LouisRams American football jersey. The juxtaposition of these three“filters” in the composition is remarkably strange, and constitutes awell composed, incredibly dramatic, mysterious, and effective newsmedia image. However, there has been much debate recently about theauthenticity of many images coming from Arab photographers, whichcompletely erupted after the Adnan Hajj controversy, when one of hisphotographs for Reuters was admittedly doctored in Photoshop. Thephotographer Mohammed Abed, who took this photograph, has also beenaccused, not of doctoring photographs, but of staging them for dramaticeffect. Was this image staged? If so, is it possible to justifyjournalists working under these conditions as operating under differentmoral pretenses, that they need to construct simplified “fictions” tobetter explicate what are very true, complex, and tragic realities? TheU.S. government, of course, has also been accused of constructingsimilar fictions (albeit with more expensive production values) likethe filmed rescue of Jessica Lynch for example, to create a heroicfigure to boost moral among citizens back home. In a digital age wherethe manipulation or staging of events is always possible, it appearsthat the images that document history don’t have to be truthful, theyjust have be believable. Fictional, dramatic devices, borrowed from theentertainment industry, have become part of the visual language of“reality”, and thus influence how military conflict is reported, andhow history is interpreted. I am interested in slowing down the viewingprocess of this photograph, to question how these kinds of imagesconstruct a collective notion of conflict that in many of ourimaginations is as removed and fictional as any image from an Americanaction movie. I photocopied the clipping several times, and then usinga scissors and a hole-punch, began layering small sections andfragments into a complex visual field. The collaged result was thenphotographed and inverted into a negative image.