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.

Stranger with a camera Summary

In the Poverty stricken region called Appalachia that spreads from southern New York to northern Mississippi a local from Kentucky and documentary filmmaker by the name of Elizabeth Barret wanted to take her skill with documentary filmmaking to the next level. To do this Barret took a camera to where she grew up in the Appalachia region of Kentucky. The film is called “Stranger with a Camera” which takes a good look into a murder that shocked the world. Where Barret starts her story is with the death of a film maker by the name of Hugh O’Connor. In the mid 1960 ‘s Hugh O’Connor was hired to produce a film about poverty in America and this brought him to a part of Kentucky called Letcher County where poverty was at a all time high. He was documenting on all of the family that were considered to be living in poverty. On his way out of town he saw a house that caught his eye. He drove up to the house where there was a man sitting on the porch with his daughter by the name of Mason Eldridge who at the time was renting that house from a man named Hobart Ison who was know around the county as a man not to be messed with and to be respected. Eldridge spoke with O’Connor and agreed to let him film him self and his daughter.Ison got word of this and thought that O’Connor was trying to make fun of poor people this is when ISon told O’Connor to leave his property O’Connor was on his way leaving when Ison shot O’Connor in the chest and killed him. Ison was only imprisoned for a year simply because a impartial jury could not be found.
I feel that Ison might have over reacted because O’Connor was leaving and he had agreed to leave but Ison Just shot him anyway. I don’t feel that Ison was out of line thought because it was his property and O’Connor did not ask the property owner for permission. This scenario in the end I think it was a big misunderstanding because Ison jumped to drastic conclusion before he ever really knew what was actually going down also O’Connor thought that Eldridge was the owner when in reality Ison owned the property in which O’Connor was photographing

Summary on " Stranger with a gun"

The video, " Stranger With a Camera" produced and directed by Elizabeth Barret is a documentary on why a person would commit murder on an innocent man who just carried a camera. This video explores what caused this man to go buserk and the culture of the town where the murder was commited. This video takes you into the lives of the people who live there.
Hobert Ison was a man who lived in the little town in Lecher County, Kentucky in the Appalachia Region. He was a very well known man in the town, who helped people out alot. He owned alot of land and didn't like people stepping on his land. As one woman expresses in the video, Hobert Ison was a caring, loving man who everyone liked.
The outsider was a man named Hugh O' Connor who was a highly skilled director of the National Film Board of Canada. O'Connor was a traveling man who wasn't at home very often, according to his daughter. The reason why he traveled so much was because he was, indeed, a photographer who captured rare seen footage, and looked for different cultures, unusual in big cities.
Appalachia was a region which caught peoples eyes in the 1970s. The lands were rich and the people different. The Appalachia people and culture became widely published in the media. This didn't go so well with some people, as they felt that they were being portrayed as being poor, showing only the bad things, not the good. This region was all about mining in the hills, where there was plenty of coal. Every man , if he wanted a job, had to find it in mining. Coal was partly why this area got so much publicity. They wanted to show Americans what miners did and how they lived. Asking the question "is this the American dream".
Hugh O'Connor and his crew of photographers were driving up one road, when they saw a man who just got done working in the mines, was on the porch holding his baby. O'Connor stopped to ask if they might take his picture. The man( Mason Elbridge) said yes you may, no big deal. The photographers found something else very close afterwards that interested them off the side of the road, I'm not sure exactly what it was but they were filming it, when a man(Hobert) drove up and started yelling at the men saying " get off my property", as the yelling continued, Hobert got excessively mad and shot Hugh O' Connor to death. Why? They explain in this video that it was because Ison was a very private man who didn't like people just doing whatever they wanted on his land. Hobert went to jail for this crime that he had commited, but was released after just one year behind bars. Unable to find an impartial jury to hear his trial, they declared a plea bargain. He declared it was self defense, saying" I had to do it. What would he have done to me picture wise and all?" Some say he did right in killing O'Connor, but nothing gives a man a right to kill.


I believe I could talk about how O'Connor went into Hobert's private life and somehow photographed something that he didn't want other people to see. The same is for athletes and actors, who want their lives to be private, but are unable to because we have this media today that looks to pry into anything and everything in one's life for a good story.

Summary and Response to “Strangers with Cameras”

In the documentary directed by Elizabeth Barret titled “Stranger with a Camera” Barret documents the story and events leading to the murder of Hugh O’Connor a Canadian filmmaker in 1967, which took place in Lecher County, Kentucky in the Appalachian Mountains. “Stranger with a Camera” not only shows the context for which the murder of Hugh O’Connor was killed, but shows how communities of the rural Appalachian were affected by the coal mining industry, and the subsequent media inundation of their communities

In 1964 President Johnson declared a “war on poverty” in America, and the rural Appalachian region became the poster with which was shown, the poverty in America. Most of the region and its inhabitants were there to mine the vast amount of coal in the mountains. As the mining become more industrialized, the “area went into disrepair and poverty [and] coal miners were replaced by machinery.” As most of the region’s economy was based on the coal mines, and coal being the main resource in the area, many of the workers became unemployed. Of the workers that still worked for the mining companies, many felt they were being exploited by the industry working in poor conditions and for little pay.

The area had “become a metaphor for all that was wrong with the American dream.” This depiction was seen by media as something that needed to be shown to America. Media began pouring into the area to document the social issues taking place in the area. People in the region mixed feelings about the attention that their communities were receiving. Some were glad that area was being shown, as it could help with social injustices that were taking place there. Others though, like Hobart Ison, were outraged by the depiction of their communities as people who needed saving, and saw reporters and documentarians as “outsiders and agitators.” Hobart Ison, a landlord in the area, did not care for presence of filmmakers on his land. As Hugh O’Connor was filming one of his tenants, (a local coal miner) Ison became enraged, and confronted O’Connor, and as his film crew was leaving, O’Connor was shot and killed by Ison. Ison later stated that he acted in self defense stating that “[I[ had to do it. What would he have done to me picture-wise and all?” Larry Daressa wrote in a review of “Stranger with a Camera”[Ison] clearly believed that he owned what was said about [his land] and about the people that lived on it.” Implying, that he didn’t want his life and those in the community to be portrayed in light that may not be accurate with what he thought of his own community.

Elizabeth Barret brings up very interesting ideas on the effect of media portrayal of that which they are documenting. Do cameras show the whole story of a community when they show people in a social standing. When media is trying to depict a society in a certain light of being different from other societies is the media portraying every part the community. A picture a supposed to show a thousand words, but what if that is not all the words of that community, is that what the people being portrayed would say? What about the pictures that are not being shown? I believe that media needs to be objective in their portrayals of people, media needs to try to see things for all aspects of which their showing. It can be hard thing to do when most of the media have an agenda, showing things in a certain light that best suits their story, makes it hard to be objectionable. That is why Barret has documented the story of this society, to bring into view media’s role in what happened in Lecher County in 1967. Barret as a member and having grown up in the area is able to look at the situation more objectionably, and let you look at all areas of the communities in Appalachia, not just the poverty issues there, but deeper into the actual lives of the people there. Barret does so in a way that makes you able to make your own thoughts on why Hugh O’Connor was killed.

During the sixties the Appalachian region was the image of poverty in America. Lyndon B Johnson had declared a “War on Poverty” there. Bobby Kennedy walked the streets of small eastern Kentucky towns for the cameras show the poverty little kids grew up in. Or at least that is what the documentary filmmakers showed and showing that cost one of them their life. Hobart Ison gunned down Hugh O’Conner an experienced director for the National Film Board of Canada out of fear of how he would represent his land and the area he had lived his life in. In “Stranger with a Camera” documentary filmmaker Elizabeth Barret explores the tension that led up to this murder and what the responsibilities are of the documentary filmmakers when they are representing a group. What had drove LBJ to declare a “War on Poverty” in southeastern Kentucky was the book “Night Comes to the Cumberlands” by Harry Caudill a lawyer that felt that it was necessary to tell about the poverty and how the region was being exploited for its coal. Once the war was declared the area was “inundated with picture takers” (Barret) wanting to capture the poverty to show the world. One of those picture takers was O’Conner a Canadian filmmaker that had been hired to film a piece on the Appalachians for a film called “US” that was going to show the achievements of the country and the underside of the country. O` Conner had spent sometime filming in Lecher County, Kentucky and was on his way out of town when he saw a coal miner sitting on his front porch holding his child still covered in coal dust. O` Conner and his crew stopped and got permission to film from Mason Elbridge to film him and his family. As they were filming Elbridge’s landlord, Hobart Ison, came driving up and jumped out of his car with a gun. He begin to yell, “Get off my property” but the film crew didn’t move fast enough for him so he shot O` Conner in the chest killing him. Mr. Islon’s reasoning for this was he feared character assassination by camera; he feared how he would be represented for renting out shanties and how the region would be represented when all the filmmakers filmed were the poorest people. This leads Barret to ask the question “[w]hat are the responsibilities of any of us who take images of other people and put them to our own uses” (Barret)? This is an interesting question to ask because you can do so much good and yet so much bad with a camera. You can alert the world to a crisis in some far off place or you can condemn a group to be known by a stereotype since that is all that the world ever sees. Colin Low a member of the National Film Board of Canada says it best when he says “a camera is like a gun… it’s threatening” (Low). And like a gun that threat can be equally used to bring about justice or condemnation.

Evidence for Selfe’s Claims

Our group worked with "The Un-Gendered Utopia and the same old gendered stuff" in Selfe’s Article, “Lest We Think the Revolution is a Revolution Images of Technology and the Nature of Change”. One of the main claims in this section is the following: "computers are complexly socially determined artifacts that interact with existing social formations and tendencies-including sexism, classism, and racism-to contribute to the shaping of a gendered society" (Page 306). Evidence to support this claim is provided through an advertisement which can be found on page 314 in the article. This advertisement targets women by implying that Nokia’s Monitors are of class and beauty. Another claim Selfe states in her article is that "men use technology to accomplish things; women benefit from technology to enhance the ease of their lives to benefit their families," (308). I believe that this statement is highly controversial and is a sensitive issue touching on the gender roles in society at the time. Selfe uses yet another advertisement to support her claims. This time she uses an advertisement for Netbooks. The advertisement states “We’re mapping a whole new whole world.” But the image above the writing doesn’t seem to match. The image portrays the power men had over women during the 50’s. The man holds the computer keyboard while his family, child and wife, gather around to watch. This is strong evidence to support Selfe’s claim about gender roles in a family household.

Selfe"s claims

In the essay “ Lest We Think the Revolution is a Revolution, Images of Technology and the Nature Change” by Cynthia L. Selfe, she claims that our culture is using images of women in traditional roles to advertise technology. Selfe says “ and they are familiar roles-the seductress, the beauty, the mother-all relationships ratified by historical experience, easily accessible to our collective imagination, and informed by traditional social values” (315). She supports this claim with figure 17, a woman gripping the Samsung which shows the role of the seductress. Men are treated with the same stereotypical views as women, “men are shown to adopt the equally traditional and retrograde roles of bikers, nerds and sex maniacs”(316). Selfe uses figure 22 to back up this claim, a man is riding a motor cycle and it says “Easy Rider, Pop a Wheelie On The Internet”(319). Her reasoning for this is Companies are using these stereotypes because it’s easier than breaking the mold. People are able to relate to the roles and clearly understand what the message thats being portrayed.