Literary.NonFiction

Meerkats posted about Erroll Morris’ blog about perception and photography at the New York Times.

In the article Morris brings up alot of interesting issues documentary filmmakers and journalists have to consider when telling a story. The crux of Morris’ point is that amid the myriad details conveyed in a scene, how does our mind determine what details to remember as relevant, and which ones are not? In a situation like the gorilla experiment, the context tells people what to focus on -the people in white shirts passing the ball- but in film, where does this context come from?

The indiscriminatory nature of photography means that, while a camera physically functions like our eyes, it does not filter information the way we do when we see something first hand. (Morris uses the example in a previous article of the powerlines you didn’t notice when you took a picture of the beautiful sunset that make the picture look terrible.) This is why photography is a craft that must be studied: to understand how to maintain, enhance even, that context. But this presents a problem. Everyone’s perception is inherently different, and when you are making a film you MUST impose your perception on what you are creating; if not it will just come out a jumbled mess.

Furthermore, in order to keep peoples attention, you must use all kinds of aesthetic devices; but every aesthetic decision you make is going to color the context you are giving the viewer. This is not to say that mediated reality is somehow inherently evil, it is these very properties that we can control that make it so powerful. But we must acknowledge that AT BEST, all we can say is “this is how I saw it”.