Fellows Join Talkbacks for ‘Time Stands Still’

Photo Credit Joan Marcus (EW.com)

The Dart Center and members of the Dart Society are providing context for the play “Time Stands Still,” as part of a series of talkbacks scheduled after the performances at the Cort Theatre.

VII photographer Ron Haviv, a 2004 fellow, was part of a talkback given last Tuesday that was sponsored by the International Center for Photography. Getty Images photographer John Moore, a 2008 fellow, took part in a post-show conversation sponsored by Getty with colleagues Mario Tama and Shaul Schwarz this week. The Dart Center is co-sponsoring another talkback Nov. 30 with More magazine featuring NBC journalist Bob Woodruff, who was injured covering Iraq, and his wife, Lee, and psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton.

Here’s a clip from the play, which features Laura Linney as Sarah, a photojournalist who was injured while covering the war in Iraq. Her partner, James, played by Brian d’Arcy James, is a foreign correspondent struggling to help Sarah in the aftermath. Eric Bagosian and Christina Ricci play, respectively, the couple’s journalist friend and his younger girlfriend.

The play, Haviv said, humanizes the journalists, but “I was sort of very sensitive to this continued portrayal of us as vultures who don’t do anything to help, that when we’re taking photographs we’re exploiting people.”

Those criticisms are pulled together in Linney’s character, said Lubben. Ricci’s character, Mandy, seeks to to know what the photojournalist is asking of viewers who see Sarah’s images.

“They’re potent arguments: Is there a value to recording for the purpose of documenting history? Is it the photojournalist’s job to also get audiences to respond? People sometimes question what you’re doing there, if your photographs can’t rectify the situation,” Lubben said.

She said that it is an oversimplification to either label journalists as vultures or as heroes.  “They’re making choices to do that work,” Lubben said. “There’s a danger in putting them too much on a pedestal because it also diminishes the value of what they do.”

Moore had this to say after the Nov. 16 talkback: “The play was at turns light and hilarious and explosive and heartbreaking. Always smart. Was it realistic? Mostly. Did some of it hit close to home? Yes. When Laura Linney’s character describes the horror of photographing a charred survivor of a suicide bomb blast, it really gave me the chills. The panel afterward was a good group (Mario Tama, Shaul Shwartz and me from Getty and moderator Jamie Wellford from Newsweek) and we had some strong anecdotes from our own careers. Like in the play, I think we gave them some humor along with the tough stuff. A large percentage of the audience stayed on for the panel, so they were very engaged and, in fact, moaned when the moderator announced we had to wrap it up after only half an hour.”