Errol Morris is widely considered to be one of the best American filmmakers, a reputation that is especially impressive considering that he works in the ghettoized genre of the documentary. The Fog of War (2003) won him an Oscar, and The Thin Blue Line (1988) accomplished an even more notable feat: it got an innocent man off death row. Recently, Morris launched Zoom, an ambitious series of essays for the New York Times Web site that examines the ability of photographs to reveal truths about the world. He explores similar terrain in his upcoming film, Standard Operating Procedure, investigating the notorious Abu Ghraib photographs and the incidents they portray. (The 1.5 million words of interview transcript he amassed from soldiers and the Army Criminal Investigation Division (cid) will also serve as raw material for a book by the same name, which Morris is writing with Philip Gourevitch, the author and Paris Review editor.)

Morris, whether his subject is a former secretary of defense, a lion tamer, or an operator of a pet cemetery, is a master of getting people to listen—so when he enters a reportorial minefield as fraught as Abu Ghraib’s, journalists would do well to pay attention. Michael Meyer sat down with Morris in his Cambridge, Massachusetts, office to discuss photography, journalism, and the strangely overlooked fact that there is a real world out there. (A video clip of the interview is located here.

Michael Meyer: In a very real sense, it was the genre of photography that gave birth to Abu Ghraib, at least as a public scandal. What role did photography play in the way you constructed Standard Operating Procedure?

Errol Morris:

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