Documentary and storytelling – summary

Documentary and storytelling, a chapter from the David Bates’s photography (key concepts) initially discusses the origins of documentary explaining that its aims were to show the actuality of everyday life’s of ordinary people. The explosion of documentary due to the rise in mass press after the Second World War saw the emergence of popular illustrated photo magazines. Photographers played key positions in illustrating a story through the photograph. Text became secondary to the image acting as assistance to the image. The aim of documentary work was not only to record and document but also to creatively educate.

Organisation is also said to play a key part in the storytelling for example layout of pictures. However the photographers had little control over how the images they had worked hard to take were organized which may detracted from the intended the meaning the photographer initially intended.

Documentary was seen to have developed from the mass rise of democratic movements the importance was given ordinary people, inspired by the idea of factography ‘the representation people’. Early documentary photography before it became popular was seen to have focused on the plight of the poor to the middle-classes.

Reportage, derived from the idea of the snapshot which implied a great expressive quality with a high amount of subjectivity. Subjectivity and objectivity are seen as two key modalities of documentary, one always being present even if unintended.

The decisive moment an idea put forward by Henri Cartier-Bresson brings together the notion of instantaneity with the concept of storytelling with a single picture.

The aim of documentary is to make the spectator into the eye witness. A spectator can participate by seeing with their own eyes what the photographer has seen. The two tendencies in documentary photography as first-person and third-person documents position the viewer differently. The subjective view point appears involved and engaged in the event, while the neutral or objective viewpoint appears almost indifferent or disengaged.

Documentary relies on the construction of an image of reality in representation. Construction, on which the whole project of documentary was based, can also be described as manifesting a desire for reality.

During 1980 colour photography began to appear in documentary and art. Initially colour wasn’t seen to embody the quality of documentary. Eventually the arguments gave way and colour became the new reality.

The rhetorical form of documentary photography still exists however it had to find a new voice within contemporary media.