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Documentary PhotographyRecording the everyday for posterityBruce Davidson is an American photographer who is renowned for his street work. Most of his work has been done in the States, including a Guggenheim funded project in 1962 which enabled him to document the US Civil Rights Movement in Time of Change. However, in the early to mid 1960s Davidson spent some time in England and Wales, producing a unique set of images which illustrate parts of the UK from an outsider's perspective.
Bruce Davidson Wales 1965 These photographs are interesting on several counts. As one looks at them now, at the beginning of the 21st. Century, there is something quite fascinating about the ordinariness of them. At the time the scenes they captured were in no way extraordinary; it is only now, with our over-sophisticated gaze, that they seem so intriguing precisely because they show the same sort of things we are familiar with, but differently. This is true of all historical documents which record the banal and insignificant, of course. We should be thankful for photographers and artists down through history who have had the foresight to value the seemingly valueless and preserve it for posterity. Documentary photography usually ends up in an exhibition (actual or online) or in a paper publication; rarely does work by a stills photographer find its primary outlet in areas dominated by the moving image - television, cinema and so on. Text plays an important part - giving provenance to the images or offering contextual information which guides the viewer in ways to interpret what is being seen. Often, documentary work takes the form of a photo story or series of related images rather than a single photograph, but both forms are valid. Whatever the form of the final output, all documentary photography must inform, educate or at the very least stimulate thought. It should explore its subject matter thoroughly and attempt to climb inside the skin of the people, institutions, concepts or whatever is under scrutiny. In his book 'Approaching Photography' Paul Hill tells us that 'The true documentarian does not aim for an esoteric end product which only a few can understand; communication with, and comprehension by, a mass audience should be the aim with this type of photography.' It is impossible (arguably) for a documentary photographer to shoot with complete dispassion and objectivity. All (human) photography is produced by the action of someone deciding when to press the shutter, so a decision is made as to when and where to capture an image. Further more, once the photographer has created the image, there lies ahead a whole trail of inference and interpretation which may well render the original intentions of the creator quite impotent. Two photographs by Chris Steele-Perkins serve to illustrate this point.
These images were taken during a violent clash between National Front marchers and anti-racist protesters in Lewisham, 1977. Steele-Perkins has taken two contrasting photographs which, together, tell a balanced account of the kind of events unfolding on the day. In photograph one, a demonstrator is being manhandled by the police - a victim. In the second photograph, it is the policeman who is the victim - injured in the conflict and being taken to safety by his colleagues. If, as editor of a newspaper, you only had the space to print one, which would it be? And (crucially) what would the caption say? Keith Pattison also recorded the struggles of mining communities during the Thatcher years:
Arrest of Josie Smith, a retired, disabled miner, during police efforts to escort returning miners back to work 1984 Keith Pattison Pattison was Photographer-in-Residence in Easington colliery village in 1984, at the height of the miners' strike. He was ideally placed to document the events in a typical mining community as they unfolded. Colin O'Brien has spent fifty years photographing life on the street. He has owned up to having some half a million negatives in a cupboard under the stairs, giving an indication of how prolific his output has been since he started taking pictures on a box Brownie when he was ten years old. (His parents upgraded him to a Leica when he was only twelve.) He considers his first 'real' photograph to be one he took of a road traffic accident outside his parents house when he was just fourteen; realising then that he had a talent for street photography.
Travellers'
Children, London Fields
Perhaps the best known example of contemporary photojournalism in current mass circulation is the National Geographic magazine and website where photojournalism and the documentary approach is consistently used to provide educative material to a mass audience across the globe. In 1938 an innovative publication began to set the standards for photojournalism in a regular publication: Picture Post became hugely popular in the days before widespread television ownership as a means of dissemination. Thurston Hopkins worked for the Picture Post in the last seven years of the paper's life. (The publication met its demise in 1957 following a decline in circulation and much in-fighting.) Henri Cartier-Bresson first dabbled in photojournalism in 1937 when we was sent by the French publication Regards to photograph the coronation of King George VI. However, instead of training his lens of on the spectacle of the day, HC-B preferred instead to turn his back on the pomp and record what was going on in the mass of spectators lining the route:
References Hill, P. Approaching Photography. Photographers Institute Press, Lewes 2004. URLs All sites accessed and working 15/2/06 Time of Change Bruce Davidson. A documentary project following the US Civil Rights Movement. England and Wales Bruce Davidson. National Geographic online
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(C) Helen Williams 2006 |
