issues of representation and building a relationship with a subject

Based on reading of Documenting the documentary, by Micheal Rabiger:
"Documentary representation, in trying to control mass perception of the truth, is really a bid for political influence." Often documentaries adhere, unintentionally, back on traditional norms "power of the universal, mythic and fetishistic"
"Documentaries are a construct, and reveal as much about their maker as their subject". Things to think about- rights, violations and veracity (publics right to know, protecting a subject from itself/the world etc) politics and control and form, authorship (how much voice you might want to put in it)

Some reviews of relationship/subject documentary films:

As the founder of Kartemquin Films in Chicago in 1966, Gordon Quinn has many years of experience with documentary production. Known for tough, issue-driven documentaries, Kartemquin is particularly devoted to fostering, as it states on its website, "the growth of emerging filmmaking voices passionate about social issues and media policy." Asked about the balance of power between filmmaker and audience, Quinn notes he makes a point of trying to give the viewer a sense of how the story is being told and what the filmmakers' relationship with the subject is like.

For Kartemquin's recent film In the Family, about predicting breast and ovarian cancer and how women live with the risk, director Joanna Rudnick was having a difficult time finding  a woman who shared the BRCA gene that she had. She felt that the most effective way of building trust with her subjects was to share her own story on camera with them, which enables viewers to see how that relationship between filmmaker and subjects evolves over time.

Quinn recently completed Prisoner of Her Past, a film about a childhood Holocaust survivor who is suffering from Late Onset Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, obviously a topic requiring sensitive and delicate handling. While he had permission from her son, the legal guardian, Quinn wanted her permission as well. She was ambivalent, and Quinn captures that in an interesting way. She had said on camera that she would not give permission. Nevertheless, she allowed filming and at several points addresses the camera directly. In a painful and fraught scene where she meets a Polish cousin from childhood, she refuses to acknowledge him and asks him to leave the room. Then she turns to the camera on Quinn's shoulder and says, "Excuse me, I am talking to this gentleman," referring to the filmmaker. In the last shot of the film, she turns to the camera and says, "Goodnight, ladies and gentlemen," before heading off to her room.  Quinn kept these scenes in the film to give the audience a clear sense of her character and his relationship with her.

Director Liz Mermin had a different set of concerns with her recent film, Team Qatar, about five high school students from Qatar training for the World Debate Championship in Washington, DC. In order to establish trust with the kids, she spent a lot of time talking with them off-camera, explaining the film and answering questions about herself, and she made it clear that anytime they wanted her to stop filming she would do so. "That didn't mean I didn't try to get them to change their minds," Mermin explains. "Sometimes I would explain why I thought it was important to the story, and they'd decide it was okay, but sometimes they were adamant and I wouldn't push because I didn't want to hurt them. Even if I thought they were being silly, there was a possibility I didn't know what they were up against at home, and it would run the risk of destroying our relationship, or ruining the film."

Dealing with cultural sensitivities and the safety of these kids after the film was completed was perhaps the most challenging issue for Mermin. A key scene occurs when the Qatar kids, particularly religious Muslim girls, react to the London Gay Pride parade, which provokes an intense debate. Mermin needed to balance what would work well for the film with concerns for her subjects in the long term. "Would we get the girls in trouble with conservative friends and family by showing that they were at the event at all?" she reflects. "Would we hurt them in the future by showing their uninformed homophobic reactions? I had to walk a line conveying their feelings and their work coming to terms with what they'd seen without keeping them on record forever with ignorant or bigoted views. That was about very careful editing. A very complicated emotional and cultural clash had to be reduced to a four-minute scene, and that's never easy."

Another tricky situation occurred when the Qatar kids came to Washington for the final competition. They got to meet students from Latin America and Israel, went out for ice cream and hung around in their hotel rooms. Mermin decided not to shoot this despite its potential interest. "The presence of the camera would have made it artificial," she notes. "The kids from Qatar trusted us and didn't care, but the other kids didn't know us, didn't want cameras in their personal time and didn't want to be extras in someone else's film."

Mermin strives to observe, listen and provoke thoughts and questions without telling anyone what to think. She aims to "create the feeling of being there, where there is a world they wouldn't otherwise know. If audiences come away with vastly differing opinions, arguing about what they've seen, I feel I've done my job well."


These are quite interesting ways to look at how you might interact with subjects and people. These are both examples of how people might try and show subjects as they wished to be shown, and also in an artistic way too. There seems to be quite a thin line between give and take- be too sensitive to try and make people seem like how they think they appear, and also how they appear to the camera person. This seems to be quite a sensitive line; people often will see themselves in a good, or at least positive light, while the photographer has to tread around the obvious troubles (which are usually what makes the person an interesting subject) As with Diane Arbus, you could be crude, call them freaks- or you could do as the photographer above, with the debate children. There is an obvious questioning about how these kids were raised and the parents, though o course the participants and schools want the subjects to appear as best as they can. 
There is also the question about art/reality which I find interesting. If you are Hertzog, you just talk and talk and what is artistic is your vision of the world, however biased and wrong it is. This is very hard to pull of without sounding pretentious and arrogant (Hertzog barely manages it) Other documentary film makers are much quieter, they hang and watch and let you make your own decisions. 
I will have to be very careful about how I shoot the photos, and deicde a style- i want the people to have a voice, but I also want it to be artistic and to not be a sentimental reflection of whatever the subjects want to say.