nada /DANM299 /Feb First

I continue on with my independent study with B. Ruby Rich.

I'm drawn to several quotes from the book Witness of Our Time by Ken Light. On page 8 of his introduction, he quotes Susan Sontag. "A photograph that brings news of some unsuspected zone of misery cannot make a dent in public opinion unless there is appropriate context of feeling and attitude."... Light questions what makes the appropriate context. "Many documentary photographers, as do I, maintain a faith in the force of our collective acts of empathy and witness."

He continues further down the same page. "Culture clash and assimilation are ancient. What is new is the speed at which we perceive it, transmit it, turn it over, devour it. And this development, in large part, depends on images - on photographs." This explosion makes us question how truth is made and why. He quotes curator Ann Wilkes Tucker of Houston's Museum of Fine Arts who states that we started out the century believing the photograph and ended the century distrusting it. Photographers (within which I group motion picture videographers) are forced to deal with the complexities of representing the "other".

Again Light quotes Ann Wilkes Tucker, "Photographers are liberated from trust being inherent to the medium. Our acceptance or rejection of the information they present will have to do with the reputation of the photographer, the declared intentions of the maker, and what else we know about that subject. In some ways it's probably the best thing that's happened in documentary." page 10.

Last but not least, Light ends the introduction with this quote. "As they (documentary photographers) evolve and mature, democratic and humanistic traditions recognize that our commonality lies not just in our similarities, but our multiplicity, and that this multiplicity cannot be contained within any one country, culture or ideology. We can value each other although we are not the same. We can experience one another through one or another aspect of our multifaceted selves." And finally " A widened consciousness of other human being and cultures invites compassion and yields some working truths: there is no final conflict, no shelter from tragedy, no release from suffering and no end of history. It is the perfect theories and the dreams of the perfect state that deceive us."

The next documentary I watched was History and Memory about Japanese Internment by . It is has an experimental feel with a mixture of movie scenes, newsreels, real pictures, text over black background and audio bytes from her family members. Very few pictures survive because cameras were forbidden. The narrator tells the story of her family’s relocation and incarceration. The question posed by the documentary, whose images are used make the history. How do you search for the history. The memory is transferred on to the daughter before she is born. She remembers the pain and sadness that her family had. The older family members don’t talk to the younger family. A picture of a story witout the story. The movie is the journey of finding the story and the picture. This documentary reminds me of Beyond Manazanar A 3D interactive virtual reality installation by Tamiko Thiel and Zara Houshmand.

The last docmentary that I was by Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin,_Chronicle of a Summer_(France, 1961). After watching the beginning I began to skim to the end due to lack of time. The extraordinary point of this movie is the honesty, or at least what we believe, with which people tell their stories. It's interesting how with this movie and Primary . Primary wants to be the fly on the wall. Jean Rouh wants to be the fly in the soup.