Stranger With a Camera Review / Ben

In the documentary, "Stranger With A Camera," director and producer Elizabeth Barret is trying to give an equal representation of the poverty stricken area of Appalacia Kentucky. She is trying to make sure that all parts of society are represented equally, because all the previous reports and news crews had failed to do so. All of these attempts wanted to focus primarily on the families and parts of town that were far worse than anywhere or everybody else. Just because parts of town poverty stricken doesn't mean that everybody in the town was suffering according to Barret. During era of depression within the Appalacian Mountains so many horrific scenes were displayed and broadcasts, that anybody who had seen these images believed that this was what every square inch of this area looked like this. So many people think that photography can only depict the bad things, but Barret wanted to show the world that good things still exist during this time of depression. Examples of showing only the bad things would be all the footage created by other reporters that Barret used in her documentary, all the footage seemed to show families and kids with nothing. This footage never seemed to show the families that lived in the area and were still living well off.

I agree with Barret for the most part. I believe that reporters and anyone who is trying to capture the situation so that they can present to the world should capture the whole picture, not just the important parts. But I also disagree because focusing on the bad parts of the society, it was easier for people to realize that this small community was beginning to fail. Therefore, it was easier to get help for these people. I think that there is a fine line between showing the whole situation and just showing parts of it, and that it is critical for reporters and photographers to ride that line. This is a shady area, everybody has different morals that they abide by, so become very difficult to determine whether or not a fair depiction has been given. It isn't fair to the rest of the community to show only the bad parts of it, but then again if you show all the parts of the community equally, viewers will not realize the severity of the situation with the bad parts of society. Barret grew up right in the middle of this "mess", and even though her family was well off, people believed that just because she came from that area of that she was like the rest of the poverty stricken population. She believes that it was not only her duty to her community, but also to her family to show the world the whole picture, not just the bad parts of it.