Martha Rosler
[Artist, b. 1943, Brooklyn, New York, lives in New York.]
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.
![](/images/rdquo.gif)
Photography [can] be seen as a system of representation that you bring to bear on other systems.
![](/images/rdquo.gif)
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?
![](/images/rdquo.gif)
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.
![](/images/rdquo.gif)
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.
![](/images/rdquo.gif)
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.) ![](/images/rdquo.gif)
How useful are documentary photographs if there is no follow up, no way of knowing what happened next in the story?
![](/images/rdquo.gif)
Women war photographers had to fight on two fronts: the bombs, and the men.
![](/images/rdquo.gif)