Printed Motion Picture Acquisitions
Friday Morning Coffee Credits
Archivist Obsesions
Eric Stephanian
Orphan (2015) Eric StephanianISBN 979-12-82682-06-0
Bootleg feature doc
based on WWI orphanage footage
The initial spark ignited from a reflection on how we usually understand orphanhood only in a negative sense. We assume that every child must be raised and protected by parents, and that being without parents is automatically a tragedy. But I began questioning this assumption. I wondered whether being an orphan might actually contain a certain form of liberation, a freedom from the damage that parents can sometimes unintentionally impose on their children. The image used in the project is a panoramic archival photograph of an orphanage taken during the First World War. That historical moment produced a large number of children who grew up without parents. It made me think about how these huge events in history shaped entire generations of people who were raised outside traditional family structures.
This led me to question the role of parents in forming identity. Many of us believe that parents sacrifice their lives to give their children better lives. But I began to ask whether this is always true. Are we really giving children more good than damage? What if the influence of parents sometimes imposes instability, expectations, and psychological pressure on children? It raises the possibility that if parents withdrew from shaping their children so strongly, individuals might actually grow more freely into themselves. The photograph shows a large group of children, and this was important for the project. Orphanhood is usually understood as a deeply personal and individual condition, but the image reveals it as something that also forms a collective identity. The way individuals are raised ultimately shapes the behavior and identity of entire groups.
In the book, the image is gradually enlarged, beginning with blurred, grainy fragments that resemble unstable portraits of individual faces. At first the viewer sees these degraded, unstable details, which represent the deterioration and instability that can be imposed on individuals through upbringing and social structures. As the image becomes larger, the viewer begins to see the full photograph and the entire group. Through this process the project suggests that the instability created on the individual level eventually becomes visible at the collective level. What appears to be a group identity is actually formed by the accumulation of these individual conditions...
Out of Catalogue