To “shoot the folks“ means not solely to seize them, however to bear witness, and to make use of the digicam as a weapon of testimony. Such is the ethos of Andy Mundy-Fort’s documentary Shoot the Folks, which follows Nigerian-British photographer and activist Misan Harriman – the primary Black male photographer to shoot the quilt of British Vogue – as he traces a long time of injustice via the lens of a digicam. Collectively, Mundy-Fort and Harriman chart how one era of protesters passes one thing right 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 website in Minneapolis. He recollects 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 Folks is at its finest when it permits the images 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 stress 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 brief movie The After positioned him inside one in every 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 images to which Harriman is so clearly indebted. In the end, Shoot the Folks succeeds extra as a celebration of images than as a portrait of a single photographer.
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