part vi

of The Case of the Inappropriate Alarm Clock
By Errol Morris

THE DUST STORM

…the editor, in order to make the point more effective, had changed my words from a conditional subjunctive mood to an indicative past tense…

— Arthur Rothstein

The cow skull photographs and the dust storm photograph are the most famous of Rothstein’s images. Over the years from 1936 to shortly before his death in 1985, he provided many different accounts of how the photographs were taken. They progress from a story of controlled, posed images to a completely uncontrolled, unposed images. Rothstein first wrote about his photograph “Fleeing a Dust Storm” in 1944.[37] In an unusually forthright examination of documentary photography he explains the element of direction in creating an image. In explaining the dust-storm image he says simply, “the little boy was asked to drop back.”.............

pic: library of congress