As a student I missed a test question about one of my favorite artists, and it led me on a weird journey. When I was a student at Portland State University, I took a course in the history of photography. It was a class that perfectly linked my twin loves…

David and Albert Maysles’ documentary film Grey Gardens (1975), a portrait of “Big Edie” and “Little Edie” Beale — a mother and daughter with high-society connections living in a squalid mansion in the Hamptons — is recognized as a crowning achievement of the direct cinema movement. Rather than deal in…