Anyone who has seen the photos Shelby Lee Adams has surely walked away from the images with strong impressions – repulsion, sadness, humor, pity. Maybe a mix of all.

That these photos are often staged by Adams is explored with as objective an eye as the idea that these photos reflect the looks and lives of real people in The True Meaning Of Pictures, a sometimes sad, a sometimes disturbing documentary by Jennifer Baichwal about Adams’ work and the people of Appalachia he documents.

Broken teeth. Malformed featured. Heavy accents. And deep poverty. This is Appalachia. Think of the banjo player from Deliverance and you have the right idea.

Adams has made a career out of photographing these people. His stark black and white photography is rich with deep facial lines and scarred skin and ramshackle homes. And it’s also full of smiles. These people are, by and large, very comfortable in their own skin.

But for most of the American population – or at least those crammed onto the coasts – these folks are a side of Americana we are simply not confronted with. They’re almost alien.

In The True Meaning Of Pictures, we peer directly into their homes. We share dinner with them, and we watch as their horribly malformed but delightfully happy children play in the yard. We follow as Adams dwells among them – he comes from Appalachia; he knows this world well – and presents starkly honest portraits of their life.

Or does he? While lingering on his powerful photography, showcasing his eye for bold composition and dramatic lighting, The True Meaning Of Pictures also questions how honest Adams’ photography truly is. Not overtly, but rather by showing you just how he goes about getting his photos, and later through the questions of photography critics. We watch as one of Adams’ famed photographs depicting a family gathered joyfully around a slaughtered pig is revealed for what it truly is: an example of a photographer creating a scene from whole cloth. Adams, it turns out, provided the pig and asked for the family to slaughter it in a traditional manner, something they had not done in some time. It was less a snapshot of their lives as it was a snapshot of an event he created

So are his photographs an honest depiction of the people of Appalachia, or are they an example of Adams abusing the trust these people place in him, exploiting them for artistic purposes? The True Meaning Of Pictures offers no answers. In interviews, Baichwal reveals that she falls on the “it’s exploitation” side of the questions raised by film, yet managed to keep that opinion from battering you. She recognizes that in the language of photography, some of Adams’ photos are hardly family portraits – there is a menace in some of them, an alien air – and yet she makes an effort in the film to leave the answers to the viewer. Again, True Meaning offers no answers.

What it does do is offer an unwavering portrait of Adams’ work; how he conducts that work; the people who see his work; and the people depicted within that work.

There is a circular nature in such questions. Are we, after all, witnessing an honest portrait of Adams’ work, work that itself purports to be an honest portrait of the Appalachian people? Doesn’t Adams influence the things he seeks to photograph by his very presence, and in turn, aren’t the events documented in this film influenced by the very presence of the documentarians?

In short, it’s a powerful depiction of who they are.

Some critics scoff at the notion that these people can judge if they’re being exploited. Uneducated and unsophisticated, how would they know if they are being used? But it’s not that simple. Adams has become a welcome member of their community and their family. Staged or not, posed or not, carefully designed with a photographer’s eye or not, Shelby Lee Adams allows us to see in a way we would not ordinarily see. We see them not as stereotypes or caricatures, but as people.
And that is the true meaning of pictures.

The True Meaning Of DVD?
Beyond the film, there is not much else to speak about here. Filmed in both color and black and white, the image quality is just but ultimately irrelevant when it comes to a film like this. It doesn’t look made for TV; it doesn’t look like the work of am amateur; and that’s all that counts. The extras are all but nonexistent: a photo gallery, text bios on the filmmakers and Shelby Lee Adams, a statement by the filmmakers, and that’s it. It’s as sparse as Adams’ photography.

While I’m normally something of an extras hound, do not let the sparse treatment here dissuade you from looking into the film. It’s a highly worthy look into photography, humanity, and exploitation that deserves to be seen.

The Final Verdict
Go get this.