- Joseph Nicephore Niepce took the first ever photograph or so it is said. It is called 'View From a Window at La Gras'. (1826)
- James Natchwey- notably a war documentary photographer - "I have been a witness and these virtues are my testimony. The events I have recorded must not be forgotten and must not be repeated."
Rwanda, 1994.
Palestine, 2000.
- Photographers capture reality and record history and events with a purpose. There is a myth of neutral photography - but the photographer always has purpose / reasoning to take the picture.
- The Decisive moment.
- Cartier - Bresson - "Photography achieves its highest distinction - reflecting the universality of the human condition in a never-to-be retrieved fraction of a second".
- Jacob Reiis - constructs scenes depicting people living in slums but they are aware he is there. It still documents life in the slums - but does it really if the stage has been set? It questions the validity of documentation.
- 1888 - 'Bandits Roost'
- F.S.A. Photographers (Farm Security Administration).
- During the American depression - 11 million people unemployed.
- Roy Styker founded the program.
- Mass migration of farmers - 'Oakies' - travelled from Oklahoma and 'Arkies' from Arkansas.
- Photographs were used as photojournalism and an emotive 'weapon' / tool.
- The photographs were given instructions of what they were to record - the "reality" was pre-determined.
- Dorothea Lange - Migrant Mother (1936) - shows a migrant mother looking into the distant - thinking? The composition could be said that it resembles the 'Madonna & Child' (Raphael).
- The FSA wanted images of depression and helplessness.
- Several photographs that all the photographers took were rejected as they didn't capture what the F.S.A wanted.
- Photography was developed as supposed empirical evidence such as in 1868 where John Lamprey photographed different races of people in order to prove that some races of people were less well defined than others.
- War / Conflict Photography.
- Magnum Group - founded 1947 - Carteir-Bresson & Capa. Ethos - document the world and its social problems
- Robert Haeberle (1969) captured Vietnamese people who were literally about to get massacred and gunned down by American soldiers. He probably did this to capture the feeling of powerlessness the people felt.
- Critical Realism
- "A photograph of a Krupp factory or the AEG says practically nothing about these institutions. Really itself has shifted into the realm of the functional. The reification of human relationships, such as the factory, no longer betrays anything about these realtionships. And so what we actually need is to 'construct something', something "artificial", "posed". Bertolt Brecht (1931).
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Gillian Wearing - 'Signs that say what you want them to say' 1992-3.
"Postmodern link between art & documentary. Photographers agenda is largely removed. Audience allowed to portray their own agenda."
- Key features of documentary photography:
- Offers a humanitarian perspective.
- Tends to portray social and political situations.
- Has the purpose to be objective to portray the facts of a certain situation.
- People tend to form the subject matter.
- Images are straightforward, to the point and not manipulated.
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