Documentary Photography

Analyzing a piece of text

The life essence of documentary photography has long been questioned ever since the birth of technology and the way people seem to socially construct the message of photographs. Because of this, the original formation of documentary photography has been over thrown by new methods of more modern practices. For example, now, colour is, in my opinion a global debate as to whether it should stick with the documentation of life. To some people, it “lacks  the technical control and aesthetic order of black and white photography”. Now to work in black and white would be a way to make a “deliberate statement” or a way to reference the past.

According to David Bate the growth of digital photography has “transferred power away from the photographer” as software’s of manipulation such as Photoshop and light room now have the power to change the reality of what the photographer has originally captured in the first place. It no doubt that these software’s can create new and certainly fascinating images, however it is breaking the tradition of documentary photography. Back in the day documentary photography was a way to capture realism, but today the question of whether anything in documentary photography is real or not, is constantly on everyone’s minds

 Now, some documentary photographers are taking in the conditions of artists, who post their work in open spaced galleries in hopes to get their message across. This allusive way of work however, has led to the abandonment “of the well-worn tropes” of photojournalism as their work can’t be interpreted the way they originally want it to be. The argument is that people are now commenting on the images artistic qualities rather than interpreting what the photograph is trying to say.  Not only does this show that it has been dislocated from its former political project but it also shows that the way of distributing documented photographs has drastically changed over the years.  Now it’s a lot about Capitalism as photographs that have no necessary context can be used sell and advertise product. So the question is, what has documentary photography become, and can we really call it documentary photography? Our perception of this is shaped around what other people say which goes to show that there are limitations in documentary photography. This fact was outlined by feminist Angela Kelly while she was making her 1979 selection of feminist photographs.

Future of Documentary Photography

Famous Black and White Documentary Photographer: Dorothea Lange

With the onset of the Great Depression, Lange turned her camera lens from the studio to the street. Her studies of unemployed and homeless people captured the attention of local photographers and led to her employment with the federal Resettlement Administration (RA), later called the Farm Security Administration (FSA).

In December 1935, she divorced Dixon and married economist Paul Schuster Taylor, Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley.^[5] Taylor educated Lange in social and political matters, and together they documented rural poverty and the exploitation of sharecroppers and migrant laborers for the next five years — Taylor interviewing and gathering economic data, Lange taking photos.

From 1935 to 1939, Dorothea Lange's work for the RA and FSA brought the plight of the poor and forgotten — particularly sharecroppers, displaced farm families, and migrant workers — to public attention. Distributed free to newspapers across the country, her poignant images became icons of the era.

Lange's best-known picture is titled "Migrant Mother." The woman in the photo is Florence Owens Thompson. The original photo featured Florence's thumb and index finger on the tent pole, but the image was later retouched to hide Florence's thumb. Her index finger was left untouched (lower right in photo).

In 1960, Lange spoke about her experience taking the photograph:

I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean-to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it.

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothea_Lange