http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0364110/
In class we watched the film mentioned in the title. The film is a documentary that uses video interviews, slides of Smith's photos, and an actor portraying and narrating Smith's quotes. Portraying Smith in these sequences is Peter Riegert, who played Donald in National Lampoon's Animal House.
Photography Made Difficult creates dramatic scenes telling the stories around Smith's pictures. Some of which would be the brutal pictures of World War II, one picture showing a newborn Japanese baby being help by an American soldier.
Most of his photos show some sort of outside emotion, even without the context of the situation. All the movie needed to be was a slide show of all his photos and it would have done its job.
What Smith did was show what most people didn't want to see. Disformaties, death, life, and darkness.
The photos of the Kepone poisoning, to me, had the largest impact. Smith showed the deformed child being bathed. Something that no one else would want to see.
If it weren't for Time magazine, people would have not known about a lot of topics he covered. Thanks to the print medium people were able to see the pictures. Now, thanks to the Internet, people can see things like almost instantly.
Watching the movie, although rough for a first class was an inspiring way to start the class.
Interesting thoughts, but I'm not sure if all people don't want to see disformalities, death, life and darkness. I think that's what people do want to see. Also, thanks for posting the imdb url to your post.
ReplyDeleteI'm interested to hear what about the Kepone image invoked a response in you - when we deconstruct our own responses to images we gain insights into the powerful tools of not just the core of the photograph - its subject matter — but also elements of composition, lighting, texture, motion, etc
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