Documentary and Photojournalism - A Synopsis

Time in photography isn’t measured purely in days, months or years; it’s about capturing a fleeting moment that occurs in a split-second or less.

 Increments of time are impossible or difficult to perceive by the eye but not to digital memory or light sensitive film. The difference between a second, fifteenth or hundredth of a second alters what stands before the camera. The split second click of a shutter speed grabs, organises, identifies and interprets information in order for us to represent and understand what we have in front of our eyes. It evokes a more meaningful visual experience.

Photographer Joseph Rodriguez said “as a kid I was always told to shut up, you know be quiet and speak when spoken to. I could never get my voice out. Photography is my voice”.  (Light: 142)

How do we use photography as a voice? We can do this through photojournalism and documentary photography. Both are identical mediums, sending out different messages.

Documentary photographers reveal the infinite number of situations, actions and results over a period of time. In short, they reveal life. Life is not a moment; it isn’t a single situation, since one situation is followed by another and another. Which one is life? Photojournalism in its instant shot and transmission – doesn’t show “life”. It neither has the time to understand it nor the space to display its complexity. The pictures we see in magazines and newspapers show static moments taken out of context and exhibited in a way the media sees fit, then sold as truth. For the photojournalist time is of the essence and a deadline looms. We as viewers are often left with a biased opinion, abandoned to make up their minds based on incomplete evidence.

Violence and tragedy are staples of photojournalism, “If it bleeds, it leads” is a popular, unspoken sentiment widely used. We as viewers are attracted and intrigued by such stories; and photojournalist’s who win international prizes and competitions are almost always witness to such tragedies that get published. How many of us sit in front of our televisions not wanting to watch such abhorrent, inhumane sights, but doing so through gaps in our fingers? Photojournalism has shifted from being used as a clear focus on social, political and personal lives to pulling in a new generation of people whose fascination is with bloody body bags, violent crime and an obsession with peering into the life of normal people suffering from loss of a loved one. It’s raw, and you can almost wipe the tear off the persons face. We are dehumanised.

 

 

I feel that in certain situations we need photography to feel better about our own lives.

This image changed the lives of both the photographer and the victim and also created a stir about where a photographer’s duty finishes, behind or beyond the camera. Ut was accused of exploiting the child in the photograph but although the image did not erase the damage nor end the war, he saved the life of the girl he had photographed. Why take the photograph instead of just helping her? We question and we judge. Images like these taken in the 1970s brought to people the suffering and horrors of war that only those serving in the army usually got to experience.

With the 21^st Century bringing with it an era of digital photography e.g. YouTube, Flickr, and numerous other websites (not to mention camera phones); hundreds of new images are being released every week, and it has become the norm to open the newspaper and see devastation taken on a phone or with a cheap happy snappy camera.

Although there is good in photography, are we allowing photography to support heinous crimes and acts of suffering? Are we photographing victims?

“Today everything exists to end in a photograph”. – Sontag (1977 P24) American writer and film maker and political activist.