To “shoot the folks“ means not solely to seize them, however to bear witness, and to make use of the digital camera as a weapon of testimony. Such is the ethos of Andy Mundy-Citadel’s documentary Shoot the Individuals, which follows Nigerian-British photographer and activist Misan Harriman – the primary Black male photographer to shoot the quilt of British Vogue – as he traces many years of injustice by way of the lens of a digital camera. Collectively, Mundy-Citadel and Harriman chart how one technology of protesters passes one thing all the way down to the subsequent, and the way the photographer’s job is to make sure none of it goes unseen.
Harriman’s archive of black-and-white portraits seems all through, from demonstrators at a pro-Palestine march in London to mourners gathered at George Floyd’s memorial web site in Minneapolis. He remembers the only picture that catapulted his profession – a {photograph} taken at a Black Lives Matter protest that went viral after being shared by Martin Luther King III, who additionally seems within the movie. Shoot the Individuals is at its finest when it permits the pictures converse for themselves. Harriman’s occasional musings on his personal success can typically really feel extra self-indulgent than illuminating.
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The movie doesn’t draw back from the strain of Harriman’s personal wealth and standing. He’s a photographer caught between documenting injustice and taking advantage of the social capital it brings. This materialises when he attends the 96th Academy Awards, the place Harriman’s nominated quick movie The After positioned him inside certainly one of Hollywood’s most unique areas whereas protests raged exterior. It’s an irony that shadows each Harriman and the movie itself.
A selected spotlight is the movie’s tribute to South African photographer Peter Magubane, who famously documented the brutality of apartheid. Right here the movie turns into an homage to the photographers who got here earlier than Harriman, whose braveness and work made his personal doable. It left me wishing for extra – extra Magubane, and extra of the broader lineage of protest pictures to which Harriman is so clearly indebted. Finally, Shoot the Individuals succeeds extra as a celebration of pictures than as a portrait of a single photographer.