Stranger With a Camera

Elizabeth Barret uses her production of “Stranger With a Camera” to portray the background to a murder story from Kentuky’s Appalachian. Barret uses the “responcibilities of any of us who take images of other people and put them to our own use” (Larry Daressa, Par 1). The responcibilities are those to capture the image as a whole, showing the good and the bad. In the documentary someone stated, “It is exploited, not always true. Edited. It’s not that they take a picture of what’s not there, they just don’t ge the whole picture. (Stranger With a Camera) The filmakers that took pictures of the kentuky people, included Hugh O’Conner. In one area of the murder story, the whole picture wasn’t captured. O’conner turned back to say they where leaving but Hobart Ison shot him. Ison claims that he was doing a favor, but a good point was made. “eastern Kentucky’s appalachian region had become a metaphor for al lthat was wrong with American Dream” (The Story, Par 3). The region was dirty and the people didn’t have the best lives, but they were happy with the community around them. A resident of the area stated, “just about everyone I knew were the same. We couldn’t believe we were in poverty” (Stranger With a Camera). That’s what the filmakers didn’t always catch. They focused on what was bad and ugly about the hills. Barret showed both sides, as she came from a town not far away and in a bit higher life style. “[b]arret divides the world betwwen ‘insiders’ and ‘outsider s,’ the observed and the obsevers” (Daressa, par 3). The insider in the story was O’Conner, a man highered to capture the lives of coal miners, while Ison was the insider. The story was of how a camera and a gun came face to face. “a british film crew came to make a documentary on the center of america… The american dream had become a nightmare” (Stranger With a Camera). This nightmare had lasting affects on the community. O’Conners daugter got emotional when she spoke on the documentary, “my dad was shot one one day after my little brother after his tenth birthday. He was trying to be so strong, saying why did he have to go” (Stranger With a Camera) In the end of the documentary you see the daughter after a full view of Kentucky’s Appalachaian region has been told. “it’s almost as if there’s a chapter in your book that’s finished now” (Stranger With a Camera). His duaghter was one who just wanted to understand the story behind her father’s murder. But Barret quotes, “she had come to a place of resilution, but I have not…. As a filmaker I have the responciblility to show my cumunity what I see” (Stranger With a Camera). Barret’s perspective was one that wasn’t shown in the filmakers pictures. Instead she was out of the picture. She wanted to show the full picture that was laid out in front of her, just so the good could be shown, even years later. Her story gave a more indepth look at what the hills had to say.