Paper short abstract:

Drawing on documentary practice-based work with vulnerable communities (indigenous, differently abled & racially diverse groups) this presentation considers the space for serendipity and the camera's flow through the "hand, mind, heart and eye".

Paper long abstract:

Drawing on documentary practice-based work with vulnerable communities (indigenous, differently abled and marginalised groups) this presentation considers the space for serendipity and the camera's flow through the "hand, mind, heart and eye".

This practice-led presentation considers documentary-making as a challenging model for academic enquiry through reviewing pivotal moments in thirty years of documentary practice in film and photography. It explores the tension between film praxis as open exploration and the need to deliver an unfolding narrative for an audience or follow a supported research trajectory.

Can we genuinely dare not to 'know' an outcome in the process of making and thus be influenced by what we cannot anticipate? Can Praxis be an open and connected space of exploration, discovery and epistemology - of self and other? How can acts of recording in sound and image offer new ways to uncover and re-present the world? Haptic, embodied ways of knowing draw on the spirit and intellect in impulses that determine framing, composition and a direction of enquiry. This paper investigates examples which uncover the process of filming as a process of coming to know. How provisionally can we hold new knowledge, rather than becoming confined by it? For example, when completing our work, do we dare to disagree with it? Can the lightning-rod of praxis offer a method of open enquiry?