Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Forgotten

Ironic that I completely forgot the name of the guy who took the photos for "The Forgotten Ones." Milton Rogovin. (I guess "The Forgotten Ones" is also the name of a video game, so when I tried to google the photos, that's what came up.)

I'm not usually one for documentaries. The realism aspect of them kind of spooks me sometimes. If I don't find them eerie, I find them boring. I did enjoy Supersize Me because that one was a little quirkier and more lighthearted than some of the others I've seen. But most of them are:
1) History things, which don't interest me.
2) Medical things, which gross me out.
or 3) Underwater things, which FREAKIN' SCARE ME BECAUSE EW FISH ARE SO CREEPY ESPECIALLY THE ONES IN THE DEEP SEA WITH THE BIG SCARY TEETH I CAN'T. I JUST CAN'T DEAL WITH FISH, OKAY?!

But also murder documentaries... Those are weird and eerie, too, for some reason.

However, I did enjoy The Forgotten Ones because it was really cute. I loved seeing how the people greeted Milton when he showed up at their doors, and all of them were so eager to get their pictures taken.

One thing I noticed about this one, though, is that it almost... posed more questions than it answered. One of the images that stuck with me the most was the image of the girl and her mother taken in 1973. As the years went on, her mother continued to show up in the pictures. But then, 2001 happened and her mother wasn't there anymore! Could the mother just not make it? Did she die? How did she die? Is she dying? I'm really worried about the mother from those pictures, okay?

Maybe the whole point behind Milton's work is to pose more questions. After all, if we stop asking questions about the people in his photographs, if we stop being curious about them, we'll just forget about them again. Maybe... keeping us guessing about what happened is his way of making sure the "forgotten ones" don't become forgotten again. He has something he wants to show us, and he wants us to remember it. By not filling in the gaps between the pictures, he keeps us interested.

I think it's kind of similar to The Stain in a way. That newspaper clipping only said so much, but then the animators turned it into a beautiful (but disturbing) film. And even though that probably wasn't what happened, that newspaper clip will always be remembered, and people will always think, "What really did happen?"

The Forgotten Ones is the same way. It provides you with a tiny bit of factual information but not the whole story so that you can think, "What happened here? What are we missing?" If you're anything like me, you don't like it when pieces are missing, and it will drive you nuts! I'll probably always wonder what happened to that mother... and I'll probably never find out, but maybe that's for the best.

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