POST FIVE, DAY FOUR: Sarah Pink Article

"The meanings of photographs are arbitrary and subjective; they depend on who is looking." (Sarah Pink, Doing Visual Ethnography, 67).

I realized how poignant Pink's advice was once I had uploaded and reviewed my first reel. I had had in mind a masterpiece of ethnographic study: the Union Square holiday market at sunrise. I just knew there would be beautiful artifacts of culture and nice people to explain them to me. I knew that there would be a conflict with commuters trying to make their way through the conflict and off to work. Yet, once I got there, I realized that there was no holiday market, only a dismal looking park with stragglers here and there.


I had made up this image of the ideal subject based on my own opinion without taking that step back to let the culture exist in its own discourse. By seeking to tell a specific story, I failed at being an ethnographer. Pink reminds us that pictures cannot be given an inherent meaning. THey are "arbitrary and subjective," allowing the viewer to take his or her own stance on its visual narrative.

I think this quote is imperative to the videographic study, especially because I don't want to feign realism. Just like the man who dressed up the Native Americans for drama, there is something artistically artificial about coaxing a subject for your own story.