Documentary and Story-telling

Documentary photography emerged after the First World War and developed through the twentieth century. Photo magazines “Life in the USA, Picture post in Britain” “Drum” in South Africa and many others created stories on everyday life. The aim of social documentary work was to enlighten and creatively educate.

Editing such as arrangement of pictures, the layout on the page, cropping photographs, use of captions and titles establishing context for work. Editors had to think of the audience and advertisers, potential legal or political issues. Censorship was used.

Auteur photographers came around in 1930s.  Photo books were published Brassai’s famous book Paris du nuit”. Bill Brant’s 1938 book “A night in London”.

Russian revolution of 1917. Constructivism in the USSR.  Western democracies were all Documentary movements  and social change. “Humanist” photography, Martha Rosler.

Stories on “illicit love” or “The French leaving Vietnam after Communism had taken root.

Social documentary was about social experience. In police mug shots or social surveillance, use pictures as visual evidence.

Matthew Brady, Jacob A., Lewis Hine, all aimed to educate and disseminate the truth about an issue. Issues they documented- war, slums, immigrants, child labour, street workers.

Eric Hobsbawm notes “Reportage’ the term first appears in French dictionaries in 1929 and in English ones in 1931 – became an accepted genre of socially- critical literature ”.

(Peter Woollen “Fire and Ice”. Berenice Abbott)

(Henri Cartier- Bresson’s “The decisive moment” )

 “Seeing with there own eyes”Documentry photography won arguments built on trust.

1930 American depression, as represented by the Frarm security Administration project. (work on wars and their aftermath, exploited migrant labour, racism, genocide.

The idea of witnessing invokes the concept of voyeurism, defined as an illicit or obsessive act of looking.  French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan puts it like this in his essay “What is a Picture?” “How could this showing satisfy something, if there is not some appetite of the eye on the part of the person looking? This appetite of the eye must be fed produces the hypnotic value of painting.”

Gradually during the 1980s, the use of colour photography began to appear in documentary and art.  Arguments that colour documenting was too easy and superficial and cosmetic came about.

William Eggleston ( The Democratic Forest) is a snapshot based aesthetic.

Photographers adopted tatics ranged between tripod-based and hand held scenes which create distinct viewer positions perceived as either an objective or subjective “witness” position.  

Jeff walls art photographs he calls “near docimentry” represent reincarnation of history  and social documentary.