No more shall the specter of sobriety cast its long shadow over the documentary worker. Where are those who oppose fear, those who stand up for the beauty in truth, those who throw the shackles of the past to the ground in an effort to see the world with their own eyes? Documentarians! Let us move unencumbered by the rot of apprehension always toward honesty, always toward discovery, always toward the bursting vibrancy of life!
1.) Toward Good and away from Harm: the documentary project shall be concerned exclusively with improving human life.
In offering new insight, knowledge and expression, the documentary takes as its fundamental purpose the aim of improving human life above and before all other things. All concessions to the secondary powers of the documentary (among them to enlighten, to entertain, to educate, to challenge, to provoke, to instigate, to inspire) must be understood in relation and fundamental subservience to the primary purpose. No formula shall exist to determine the most beneficial course of action for realizing the humanist goals of the documentary worker, and thus it lies in the active ethical consciousness and honest intellectual engagement of the artist to come to terms with navigating the world and its documentary representation.
2.) Toward Discovery and away from Dogma: the primary motivation for documentary production shall be the pursuit of meaningful discovery leading to honest and appropriate conveyance.
The foregone conclusion is the antithesis of a documentary impulse, bringing with it the cardinal sins of dishonesty and the inappropriate obfuscation of reality posing as description. The documentary shall never unduly contort the materials drawn from reality to fit its agenda; rather, the form should strive to give reality the expressive human voice it naturally seeks. Accepted dogma, stale interpretation, and worn views of the world are to be relegated to history in favour of approaches in tune with the specificity and uniqueness of the demands of the current historical moment.
3.) Toward Freedom and away from Limitation: the documentary project shall always move toward an openness of subject, of expression, of construction, of circulation.
Nothing shall be absolutely taboo or off limits to the documentary project a priori, and all forms and methods must be regarded as potentially valid, especially those most radical, experimental and unconventional. Considerations of appropriateness are always to be made on a case-by-case basis, as there can be no authority on what is permissible and not permissible. The formal means chosen are those which convey discovery and meaning most aptly, and the arbitrary adherence to any formal mantra is but a cage locking away the possibilities of truth and expression.
4.) Toward truths and away from Truth: the documentary shall embrace the impossibility of singular Truth and celebrate the complications of an inherently limited perspective.
Long has the documentary been stifled with the impossible burden of the real, resulting in the unproductive polarities of unapologetic ignorance and paralyzed apprehension. The documentary should always be seen as a singular representation of reality and should never be confused with reality itself, despite the conventional refrain raised by Roland Barthes that “a specific photograph, in effect, is never distinguished from its referent (from what is represents)” (5). The media-consuming audience should be credited with possessing the ability to tell the difference, already able to “grasp the way in which photography constructs an imaginary world and passes it off as reality” (Sekula 193).
The documentary should not be faulted for failing to reach an impossible absolute Truth, only celebrated in the way in which representation gestures at something real or something honest. The suggestion put forward by Bill Nichols that “documentary has come to suggest incompleteness and uncertainty, recollection and impression, images of personal worlds and subject construction” (174) is great testament to the beginning of the documentary movement toward liberation. The dinosaurs, curmudgeons and fascists of bygone eras shall be noted and cast aside.
5.) Toward Integrity and away from Profit: neither the complex economic realities of producing a documentary nor any profit motive shall overwhelm the honest search for truth and unmitigated insight.
The documentary worker must be forever vigilant against the corruptions and compromises brought on by the economic realities of producing a documentary. A documentary sacrificing its core impetus towards genuine discovery, unrestrained expression and bold insight ceases to become a documentary at all, and thus economic constraints become a means to undermine rather than support the documentary agenda. The documentary must continue to make great efforts to resist adding to the ocean of pulp distractions and pandering to cynically imagined tastes. Popular appeal and direct communication to all people is a noble goal, nobler still when the audience is respected as intelligent, capable and sophisticated in understanding the world and the representational means through which it is engaged.
6.) Toward Discussion and away from Fear: the Documentary shall seek to break open all barriers to discussion of human social reality, and should be unaffected by public controversy, taste and reaction in these terms.
Documentaries shall not be burdened by the implied boundaries of the specific historical, social and political moment in which they emerge. Great documentaries share the same characteristics: they are brave and they are problematic. Documentarians should cross demarcations of taste, appropriateness and acceptability; the raising of cultural discussion around these boundaries and issues should be championed.
As Roland Barthes incisively notes, ”Photography is subversive not when it frightens, repels, or even stigmatized, but when it is pensive, when it thinks” (38), and in these terms the subversive quality can thus be seen as documentary’s greatest ideal. Linda Alcoff claims that “the desire to find an absolute means to avoid making error comes perhaps not from a desire to advance collective goals but a desire for personal mastery” (22) and the documentarian must be willing to risk and make mistakes if they are to overcome self-concern and work toward advancing the public good.
7.) Toward Responsibility and away from Detachment: the power of the documentary rests in its presence in a real world with consequences for action, and the effects of documentary work must be respected and embraced by the documentary worker.
The documentary does not exist in a vacuum of effect, detached from the complex world from which it is culled. A concerted and sustained effort must be taken up to appreciate the consequences of a documentary work and the effect it may have on the human lives to which the documentarian must be accountable. The documentarian must balance the two competing concerns over the effect of the artwork. Firstly, the drive toward appreciating the social effect of a documentary work is called for by Alcoff when she demands that “…one must also look at where the speech goes and what it does there” (26).
However, the documentary worker must be able to concede that “the photographer’s intentions do not determine the meaning of the photograph, which will have its own career, blown by the whims and loyalties of the diverse communities that have use for it” (Sontag 39) and thus even the most rigorous conscientiousness cannot anticipate the effect a documentary work may ultimately come to assume. The documentary worker must balance concern for the predictable social consequences of a work with a submission to the lack of control over how a work may be received and understood.
8.) Toward Purity and away from Confusion: the documentary is a mode unto itself and shall never be perverted to the constraints and functions of other forms.
The documentary is not an essay. The documentary is not an encyclopedia. The documentary is not a history book. The documentary is not an archive. The documentary is not make-believe. The documentary is not a partisan political tool. The documentary is not a lesson. A documentary work is strengthened when it draws inspiration and elements from other types of discourse, and where it transgresses accepted boundaries around form and function, but the drive to contort the documentary to the shape of parallel discourses does the mode a disservice. Let us not confuse the documentary with perverse translations of other forms.
9.) Toward Practice and away from Theory: documentary practice must cast off the lumbering weight of academic theory and critical apprehension, and pursue its calling in honest human expression.
The documentary project must be driven by instinct, intuition and insight before intellectualizing and analysis. The documentary is forever at risk of being buried by the conservatism of critical and theoretical disparagement, suffocating the production of meaningful art with anxious apprehension and self-aggrandizing proselytization. The documentarian must rise above the loud banality of critical discourse to find an authentic voice and honest vision. In denouncing the mystique of critical authority, the documentarian may move unhindered toward discovery, toward the exploration of new avenues of subject, thought and expression, and serve its role in expanding the terms of social discussion.
10.) Toward the Present and away from the Past and the Future: the documentary is made for the present moment and must communicate to a contemporary audience about the world in which they live.
Regardless of subject, the documentary is made for the historical moment in which it is produced. No consideration for past or future audiences is necessary, as the documentary finds life only in dealing with the present social context for the sake of the present day audience. The moment for documentary is now!
Works Cited:
Alcoff, Linda. “The Problem of Speaking for Others.” Cultural Critique, Winter (1991-2). NC: Oxford UP, 5-32.
Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida. New York: Hill and Wang, 1980.
Nichols, Bill. “Getting to Know You…”: Knowledge, Power and the Body.” In Renov M. (ed), Theorizing the Documentary (1993). NY and London: Routledge, 174-226.
Sekula, Allan. “Reading an Archive.” In Mining Photographs and Other Picures 1948-1968 (1983). Halifax: The Pres of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 193 – 202, 204.
Sontag, Susan. Regarding the Pain of Others. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003.
You are an excellent writer. Very life affirming. I wonder how new media can enhance these points?