A skilled gaze, is learned

Felice Tiragallo’s article, Embodiment of the Gaze: Vision, Planning, and Weaving between Filmic Ethnography and Cultural Technology, discusses the responsibilities and techniques involved in turning a filmic gaze into a skilled gaze.  Tiragallo writes of how a young Dutch filmmaker, Joris Ivens, had trouble finding the right angle with which to film the workers of a reclamation project(Tiragallo 2007:201). Finally after he had experienced the work himself, he realized what was important for his film to convey. We should have done earlier collaboration with our subjects to find out what they thought was important. By the time we found out what was true important story for us to tell, it was too late for us to create the film we needed to. Although meaning is produced differently in visual anthropology, the anthropologist still needs to construct the vision with all the standards and critical expectation one would expect in a written work (Tirgallo 2007:211). Doing this would allow for a more interpretive identity rather than an objective one (Tirgallo2007:211).

The best quote in this week’s reading was in Inga Burrows essay, The Experience and the Object: Making a Documentary Video Installation.

 “The planned filming approach was quickly abandoned”(Burrows 2005:93). I could really relate!

Tiragallo, Felice (2007)'Embodiment of the Gaze: Vision, Planning, and Weaving between Filmic Ethnography and Cultural Technology', Visual Anthropology,20:2,201 — 219

Burrows, Inga (2005) The Experience and the Object: Making a Documentary Video Installation. In Visualizing Anthropology.90-99