Robert Coles
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Robert Coles; The tradition: Fact and Fiction
Robert Coles, a researcher and teacher of psychiatry at Harvard University, is one of the world's most respected experts on the inner lives of children. Coles has been working with and writing about children for more than thirty years and his fifty-six books examine children caught in racial struggles. "The Tradition: Fact and Fiction" was introduced in 1996 in a series of lectures given at the New York public library.
In the "Tradition: Fact and Fiction", Robert Coles states that "Fictional devices, that is, inform the construction of non-fiction, and of course, fiction conversely draws upon the actual, the "real life" " (Coles p213). In other words, I think Coles is trying to blend this so called tradition of "Fact and Fiction" to create something real in attempt to connect, represent, engage, and understand the lives of others.
In Cole's documentary, Coles provides examples of work that are related to society, culture, and history. The photograph of the "migrant mother" (Coles, Figures(1), P221) is a good example of ways in which artists can manipulate reality by adding special factors and variables. The mother is centered in the picture with her child which moves the viewers from a narrow and broad scope of grief to a solid sense of sadness of an individual faces. The eyes and her expression really tell the state of deprivation. The child is hidden in a shy manner, as if they don't really exists, in order to emphasize the migrant mother's puzzled and miserable outlook...