Robert Coles on Fact and Fiction

In his essay entitled "Tradition: Fact and Fiction" Coles struggles with this idea of representation. The documentarian's aim is to represent "human actuality," he contends, but how can such a representation be attained through the subjectivity of a human lens? Coles says that his students just don't get it. They emphaize the responsibility to fact when doing documentary work and speak of the alternative as fiction, as if the two are clear-cut opposites of one another. They fail to acknowledge the subjectivity of the choices made by the documentarian--the writer, the photographer. Despite the best of intentions to represent that which is "actual," the representation will always be influenced by the subjectivity of the writer or photographer.

Events are filtered through a person's awareness, itself not uninfluenced by a history of private experience, by all sorts of aspirations, frustrations, and yearnings, by those elusive, significant "moods" as they can affect and even sway what we deem of interest or importance...

We are subjective human beings. To ignore that and carry the pretense of objectivity is a futile effort.