ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the concept of participation there are many terms in use that aim to capture an ‘opening up’ of documentary making: co-creation, collaboration, crowdsourcing, and so on. It is not always straightforward to separate participation in documentary making from questions about the political ambitions and value of such participation. Documentary making establishes relationships between those with the authority and resources to make documentary and those who appear in and/or consume documentary media. Cooperative cinema describes the first steps towards what might be regarded as a more genuinely participatory mode of documentary production. The logical end point for collaborative documentary making might seem to be doing away with professional intermediation entirely by putting cameras directly into the hands of individuals. Visions of subject-generated documentary media have a long history. Many scholars engaging with participation in interactive documentary projects point to power sharing as a continuum.
