I enjoyed and learned a lot taking Documentary Research this fall semester. Looking into the work of Robert Coles, Bill Nichols, and Dorothea Lange has allowed to me understand the components and ethics that go along with Documentary work. I enjoyed reading Robert Coles book the most because I found it the most useful and easy to connect to my essay topics. I liked how this class gave us the opportunity to create our personal blogs. I have become apart of media other then just having social media. I also enjoyed how our two main essays that we worked on throughout the semester helped us write our final essay for…

In Marco Williams documentary piece titled, “Banished” he explored three communities that were “struggling to reconcile their past” (Williams). Williams is known for working with documentaries that are solution-oriented and focus on reconciliation for African American individuals and families who are not given the opportunity to voice their own feelings and thoughts. Williams own experiences facing racial discrimination allows him to share these type of experiences with his subjects he is documenting. William’s voice within his works develops from his location, giving him a reason to want to advocate for others because of his understanding of what they are going through. However, it takes a lot of strength and bravery…

Dorthea Lange, was a struggling mother whom still fulfilled her career as a “peoples photographer” capturing the life of others and their experiences and portraying the individuals truly. The goal of Lange when documenting the lives of others was to maintain their dignity and humanity. Throughout, Lange’s career she captured individuals that were fighting to survive and support themselves during this tough time period. Lange’s work brought upon empathy and respect, it also opened the public eyes to the lives of others that they might have not ever even thought about. “Dorothea Lange was an energetic, ambitious photographer, but she also was a moral pilgrim of sorts, ever ready to…

In Robert Coles book called, Doing Documentary Work a passage that I found interesting in Chapter one was, “I was affirming what takes place all the time in human affairs: our connectedness (in this case as teacher and student), our membership (even if temporary) in whatever “community” we are trying to “study,” and thus our ability, our inclination, our need to accommodate ourselves to one another, and our participation in what we aim to observe— our participation, obviously, as well, in what we thereafter document or give to others as a stimulus for their participation” (Coles 44). Coles is explaining that within the process of documenting and observing others, documentarians…