So the thing i most noticed about the old lady on her front porch, like I said in class, was the way the scene was set so perfectly. The art of the shot was like some kind of lonely old lady version of American Gothic. I really want to know if it was staged, or arranged, or found.
If it was staged, then it is pure art, I guess. It was created by an artist, an author. But I don’t think it was staged, exactly.
If it was found, then it is pure luck. It would indeed take hours and hours of footage to stumble across somthing like that.
It was probably a combination. I bet that Morris talked to everybody in the neighborhood, filmed a few of them. But when he found Ms. Rassmussen, knew he’d found some art. So he asked her to “please sit on the porch, no ma’am, don’t bother shutting the door, no, I insist… please just put your cane right there. Now, what were you telling me about that pet cemetary?” Rather than creating or finding art in the world, these shots were probably a heightening of the art ever-present in life, through the actions of an artist.