Margaret Salmon creates stylized portraits that weave together poetry and documentary. Focusing on individual characters in their everyday habitats, her slow-moving films capture the minutiae of daily life, infusing them with gentle grandeur. Salmon portrays the common struggle of common people, constructing documents that represent characters in a social context. Her position is never aggressive nor intrusive, but balances intimacy with respectful distance, creating laconic yet moving works that are at once sober and lyrical, filled with a fragile sense of humanity. This publication functions as a reader to accompany Salmon’s exhibition (Witte de With, May - August 2007). It contains an interview with the artist by curator Zoe Gray, an essay on Salmon’s films by Bina von Stauffenberg, a short story by Raymond Carver and an historical look at neorealism by film critic Andre Bazin.