documentary photography
TRANSCRIPT
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