On interpretation

Reality or interpretation? Can memory be evidence? Can photography? Does it even matter? (and where am I coming from?)

I saw the film The Passenger yesterday. The director, Andrzej Munk, died in a car accident while driving home from the set before the movie was finished. The film was shot in Auschwitz and tells the story of a female SS officer that remembers one of the prisoners in the camp, Martha. However, because the movie wasn't finished, the only thing the viewers get is a piecing together of the parts that were shot, with still images and a narration of the parts that are missing. The narrator warns that the movie could be a mere interpretation of the director's intention. In other words, the movie is put together following the memory of what Munk wanted to show.

Almost metaphorically, the movie is about memory and interpretation. The SS officer, Lisa, shares her memory of life in the camp with Martha. All the images we see and the story we experience comes from Lisa's recollection. The scenes become a battle between reality and interpretation, between evidence and memory. Through Lisa's eyes we see life in Auschwitz as Lisa wants to remember it. We only see the version of the death camp that Lisa's mind allows her to remember...all else is blocked. Atrocities are erased and abuse is blurred in the background, while in the foreground lies a story of two women immersed in a power struggle. Martha appears energetic, defiant, even well fed. She doesn't drag herself through the camp like a prisoner that is broken down by life in the camp. Her eyes don't show the emptiness of a person that is merely waiting for death. However, this is only how Lisa wanted to remember her. She envied Martha. She was fascinated by her. So Lisa's mind chooses to remember Martha in a way that blocks out all the suffering...and ultimately, eliminates all the guilt of being an SS officer.

I go through a similar thought process whenever I see the work of a photojournalist. They bring us a reality that is first interpreted by their lens, but then passes through a series of filters: the choice of developer, toner, paper (or digital channels and filters)...and then the editing (inclusion/elimination) of the photographs in the series. Their work is a visual memory of their life experiences. But is it evidence? A photojournalist interprets a time and place where we were never present...and our absence gives this rendering a feeling of reality. To me, there is always something mysterious about a photograph that depicts an event: the exclusion from the frame of everything that was not directly in front of the lens. The reality that was not included gives the depicted event an air of mere interpretation...of memory that cannot be taken as evidence. (I'll stop now before somebody cries plagiarism of Susan Sontag).

And all this blathering was just to share the work of Brent Stirton.