On Recognition and Unfamiliarity in Documentary work
Written by Sanahin Papazian
Editor’s Note
What if the goal isn’t to understand, but to remain curious? Sanahin Papazian explores the space between recognition and unfamiliarity, asking what happens when we resist the urge to make people, images, and stories feel completely knowable. A thought that extends far beyond documentary — and perhaps into any practice concerned with looking closely.
As a documentary filmmaker, I am drawn toward people through a feeling of recognition. But the closer I move toward someone, the less completely knowable they become. I want to make films that remain alive within that distance, allowing an audience to move with me from recognition into unfamiliarity.
David Wojnarowicz wrote about dreams as an example of the imagination breaking through boundaries [1]. I keep returning to this idea because dreaming reveals a capacity we already possess. Each night, we enter images that may have no logical relationship to our waking lives, yet while we are inside them, we accept them completely. We allow ourselves to be carried through a world without needing to understand where it is taking us.
I want to think of documentary filmmaking as a tool that can lead us beyond the limits of our daily lives and speak to a deeper part of us - one that struggles within what Wojnarowicz called the “pre-invented world,” where society narrows the possibilities of our experience before we can define them for ourselves [2].
The dreamlike worlds we enter are full of unfamiliarity. And it’s important to note that unfamiliarity is not the complete absence of recognition. If an image were entirely foreign to us, it might pass by without touching anything within us. We enter the unfamiliar because it contains some trace of intimacy - a pull towards recognition.
When I’m hunting for a new documentary project I begin with that initial pull towards a place or a person. That recognition draws me closer, but once I enter that world with a camera, what first appeared familiar begins to expand and resist my understanding. At that point, I have to let the person I am filming become more than the quality that first drew me toward them. I have to allow their way of seeing, speaking, and moving through the world to complicate my own.
A person’s three-dimensionality does not always reveal itself through a dramatic confession or explanation. It may emerge through a small gesture or a sudden shift in the way they carry themselves. Sometimes I may give form to that complexity through a surreal image. Other times, it is already present in the smallest movement of the body. What matters is not the method itself, but whether the film shows different sides of your subject.
A janitor moves through his shift as if everything is under control. As he restocks a vending machine late at night, a thin layer of water ripples beneath his feet. The water suggests the building’s decaying plumbing, but also the anxiety of being surrounded by something beyond his control. The viewer may recognize that feeling without fully understanding its source, seeing something of themselves while remaining curious about him.
The film should contain enough recognition to invite the viewer into another person’s world, but it should not make that world feel completely settled or understood. I want the audience to recognize something intimate while still wondering: Where is this person taking me?
A documentary should not eliminate that question. It should keep opening it. Recognition brings us closer, while unfamiliarity carries us beyond what we thought we knew, allowing the person before us to continually exceed the image we have made of them.
[1] Wojnarowicz, David. Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration. 1991.
[2] Wojnarowicz, David. Weight of the Earth: The Tape Journals of David Wojnarowicz. 2018.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sanahin Papazian is an Armenian filmmaker based in New York City and an alum of NYU Tisch School of the Arts. Working primarily with the moving image, they are interested in subjects and forms that test the boundaries of how we inhabit and perceive the world.
