ABSTRACT
This chapter presents, the title of which deliberately echoes that of Errol Morris's 2003 documentary on Robert McNamara, The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara, argue that this picture has both 'learned' and 'taught' a number of lessons concerning the ethical problematic of looking and not looking over the years that have passed since it was taken. When the iconic press photograph is 'republished frequently in diverse contexts', Holly Edwards observes in an attentive reading of 'the life cycle' of Steve McCurry's 'Afghan Girl', its meaning is necessarily altered and augmented with each reincarnation. W.J.T. Mitchell suggests a conceptual and discursive clarification which better equips us to address how these ongoing processes of technological and cultural transformation affect our changing understanding of such a photograph. Whereas one can hang a picture on a wall, the image seems to float without any visible means of support, a phantasmatic, virtual or spectral appearance, Mitchell suggests.
