documentary photography

Documentary Photography

An Overview:

Contemporary vs Traditional

Key Points

• ‘Document’ means evidence = official, to be trusted, not to be questioned....

• Documentary as signifier of truth but what of re-presentation??

• Documentary is intimate – it assumes a bond between viewer and image and it is charged with showing the world as it really is

Early documentary was often for identification – documenting criminals

Or racial types

Jacob Riis: often seen as making start of documentary proper. How the other half lives

show images being used to explore and fix societal issues

Lewis Hine followed this model but his images show less moral intent and retain a

more portraiture like ideal

• Great Depression (USA 1930s) saw many documentary photographers respond to a brief from government sponsored FSA (farm securities administration)

• They were told to ‘bring American to Americans’ and to highlight the plight of those living in the mid-west dustbowl

• But criticised for repeating the shot until ‘expression showed poverty’ (Sontag 1971) See D Lange Migrant Mother

Dorothea Lange Walker Evans

• This project can be seen to characterise the intended emotional dialogue between reader and image. We are meant to respond in a particular way –does this mean images are staged and if so, are they not true?

• Analyse this image Margaret Bourke-White Sharecroppers

Home 1937

• Documentary then, is often constructed

• Codes and conventions are followed

• Symbolism is sometimes heavy and deliberate

• The atmosphere is emotionally charged

• The separate parts of the image are indexical i.e. They are not meant to be arbitrary but directly related to something else Dorothea Lange Migrant Mother 1936

Robert Frank The Americans are full of iconic symbols but portray a gloomy, fractured America and show a different mode of less emotionally charged and ‘staged’ images but ones that are still poignant

Eve Arnold

Robert Capa: Hungarian combat photographer: Part of the European

documentary tradition

Robert Doisneau is often seen as one of the pioneers of photojournalism

Henri Cartier-Bresson like Doisneau is created as father of photojournalism and also street

photography. His style is often decisive and always candid

George Rodger’s approach is strictly that of the obersvor. Images may be shocking but are not sensationalist like FSA. He declared himself as

‘interested in the minorities’

Don McCullin’s style has made him one of the most famous conflict and ‘strife’ photographers. He was once

refused a press permit to the Falklands by the UK government as they were worried over the sorts of

images he may produce

• Robert Haeberle People about to be shot 1969

• War photography makes for a fascination via the horror but the technology of smaller, faster cameras also brought these horrors into our homes

• Do these types of images now create a moral exhaustion and cycnisism?

Martin Parr: Part of the British new wave whose focus was on the

everyday from a critical perspective

William Eggleston is often credited for bringing colour into the forefront on documentary style

and artistic images

Simon Norfolk’s work crosses the line between fine art and photo journalism, often shooting locations that are war torn or where atrocities

were commited

GMB Akash Ed Kashi

Zoriah Miller

Birney Imes uses the camera in a totally different way yet still takes the measure of

private lifes

Documentary photography has always had the power to shock, to inform, to change opinion and to persuade yet the very term can be ambiguous and the photographer always chooses a particular frame and moment in time

Task• As practice for your assignment, you will, in

small groups prepare a mini presentation on one aspect of documentary practice discussed today

• Your presentation should be approx 5 minslong, be illustrated with appropriate images and include handouts

• You will give your presentation at the start of your last lesson this week. Be prepared to answer questions!! - all must participate