Curtains up

Interview, Nov, 2004 by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

In December 2001 I was asked by a mainstream American magazine to create a spread of images. They had invited a number of directors to do this, and the only rule was that you had to incorporate a men's suit into the design. This was three months after the events of 9/11/01, and Afghanistan had already been attacked. I had a lot of emotions going on, and I wanted to express them in some way. I'd moved to L.A. with my family just four days before 9/11, and we immediately felt the change in the country--all those flags on the streets and the cars were both moving and scary to us. As we all know from history, that kind of rabid, intense nationalism can be a frightening thing, so I thought this project might be an opportunity to exorcise my fears and point out something. I shot the images, and the magazine seemed to love them. They said they were really excited and asked me to write a short piece about what I'd done.

The main idea I had in creating the pictures was to show that both the East and the West have been blinded by half-truths, which my intuition told me was happening. It was a very confusing time and really frustrating, so my title for the photographs was Blinded by the Light. Just like the Taliban with their blinding fanaticism, the U.S. government has been working to blind their people intellectually with a lack of information. I think at some point, the methods of the U.S. government became, "You will be free to do what I want," and what seemed particularly contradictory to me was this idea of making war in the name of peace. When I explained all this to the magazine they got really scared and told me they couldn't run the pictures, as they might be interpreted as being anti-American. That made me angry because I'm not anti-American: I was just trying to voice my opinions, and I couldn't believe my photographs were not going to be shown in the country of free speech because of self-censorship on the part of the magazine.

Now, three years later, I think those pictures show something that was true then and is still true today. The one thing I might change if I were to do them again would be to have the guy with the flag wrapped around his head revealing one eye, representing the haft of America who know that something is wrong. The other half is still blinded by fear. Visually, the effect of running the images on their sides is meant to convey the idea that everything has become a little bit out of whack, as if gravity isn't working as it should.