Martha Rosler Inspirational Quotes (7)

Documentary is a little like horror movies, putting a face on fear and transforming threat into fantasy, into imagery. One can handle imagery by leaving it behind. (It is them, not us.)

The exposé, the compassion and outrage, of documentary fueled by the dedication to reform has shaded over into combinations of exoticism, tourism, voyeurism, psychologism and metaphysics, trophy hunting - and careerism.

Just going out on a foray to assemble a collection of street trophies about this or that running social sore can't be effective - and never was.

Take the Money and Run? Can Political and Socio-Critical Art ‘Survive’?

Are we asserting the easy dominion of our civilization over all times and all places, as signs that we casually absorb as a form of loot?

Photography [can] be seen as a system of representation that you bring to bear on other systems.

The question at hand is the danger posed to truth by computer-manipulated photographic imagery. How do we approach this question in a period in which the veracity of even the straight, unmanipulated photograph has been under attack for a couple of decades.