Reading Response #4

In last weeks reading response, I talked about Doug DuBois’s portrayal of the subjects and how the portraits convey the subject with a different personality than that of the actual person. This week, my response will be focused more on the journey an artist goes through when working on a project. To recap last week’s response, I opposed the statement that DuBois’s photos seem direct and honest. DuBois even says the photos only seem genuine because the audience projects their own meaning into what they see in the subject matter.

In Doug DuBois’s interview conducted for the article by LensCulture, DuBois speaks of his process in creating the long term project. It started when he went to Ireland upon receiving an invitation he nearly didn’t respond to. He met some great people during his month there and took the portrait that made him want to go back the summer after his visit. He returned to Ireland every summer for five years. As a filmmaker, I’ve made some long-term productions. The project that took me the longest to complete took two years from production to the completion of post-production. Over such a long period of time working on something, you reach a deeper level about what the project means on a grander scale. If I made the same film in a month, it would look very different from the film I made in two years. It seems to me that quick projects are more surface level and don’t go much deeper than what’s presented. With time, projects get refined and more focused--pieces that used to have meaning are replaced by pieces that propose a different idea, and the excess is removed to provide space for better things.