Seeing is no longer believing. The very notion of truth has been

“Seeing is no longer believing. The very notion of truth has been put into crisis. In a world bloated with images, we are finally learning that photographs do indeed lie.” — Barbara Kruger

These words by Barbara Kruger, the artist and critic of modern perception, strike like a thunderclap upon the fragile walls of our reality. Once, humanity believed that to see was to know, that the eye was a sacred instrument of truth, and that a picture could capture reality itself. But in her searing declaration, Kruger unmasks a new age — an age where sight deceives, where appearances are crafted illusions, and where the eye has become a battleground for manipulation. The quote is both a lament and a revelation: it warns that we now live amid images that pretend to reveal, yet only conceal; that claim to reflect truth, yet often distort it beyond recognition.

In ancient times, philosophers like Plato already spoke of this peril. In his allegory of the Cave, he described men chained before a wall, mistaking shadows for truth. They lived in darkness, believing the flickering images before them to be real, never knowing that they were merely reflections cast by unseen hands. Kruger’s words bring this ancient parable into the present, where the cave has become a global screen, and the shadows — now called photographs, videos, and posts — multiply endlessly. Humanity is again in chains, not of iron, but of illusion, gazing upon glowing images and mistaking them for the world.

The origin of Kruger’s insight lies in her work as a conceptual artist who challenged the power of media and advertising. In the late twentieth century, she began combining images from mass culture with bold, confrontational text — urging viewers to question what they saw, what they desired, and what they believed. Her art was rebellion through clarity, unveiling how images were used to shape public thought, control behavior, and redefine truth itself. She foresaw what many only now realize: that in the age of digital manipulation, photographs can lie, not just through editing, but through the false stories they imply — the selective frame, the hidden context, the deliberate omission.

Consider, as an example, the story of Joseph Stalin and his doctored photographs. In the years of his rule, Soviet artists carefully erased his political rivals from historical pictures, as if they had never existed. The images, presented as fact, became instruments of deception — rewriting history, shaping memory, controlling belief. The people saw the photographs and believed them, for what else could the eye do but trust its own sight? Yet what they saw was not truth but power disguised as reality. This, Kruger warns, is the danger of our modern age multiplied a thousandfold — where every screen is a stage and every image a potential illusion.

In our world, swollen with pictures, truth has grown thin. We scroll through endless images of beauty and suffering, success and scandal, yet rarely ask what lies behind them. The eye, once a seeker of knowledge, has become a captive of spectacle. Kruger’s declaration that “seeing is no longer believing” is not an accusation against vision itself, but a summons to awareness. She calls us to see with more than eyes — to look with the heart, the mind, and the conscience. For in a landscape ruled by false images, true vision must come from within.

The crisis of truth that Kruger describes is not only about photography or media; it is about the human condition in an age of confusion. When every image can be altered, when every voice can be imitated, when every story can be reframed — then belief must arise not from what is seen, but from what is understood. Truth becomes not something given, but something earned, through reflection, questioning, and discernment. The wise must learn again what the ancients always knew: that truth is not in the picture, but in the process of seeking it.

Thus, let this teaching be a lamp for your path. Do not surrender your eyes to deception, nor your mind to ease. Question what you see. Ask who made it, and why. Seek the reality beneath the reflection, the story beyond the frame. Learn to see not as the crowd sees, but as the soul sees — with judgment, humility, and awareness. For when images lie, the only truth that endures is the one you uncover through reason and compassion. And perhaps then, when you have learned to see without being deceived, you will not only behold the world as it is — you will begin to see yourself as you truly are.