Category: Documentary
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Mapping and Other Technologies
A ‘map’ isn’t necessarily something used to navigate through unfamiliar territory; it’s also a visual ordering of features and information…a means of making sense of our physical surroundings in new ways. Alexander 2013 p67 Liz Nicol the Rubber Band Project (1997) Ian Brown’s series Walking the Land (2007) Other artists and photographers who layer numerous different photographs include Idris Khan,…
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The Road
The road has featured prominently in art and literature as a means to get characters from one place to another, and as a stage for narratives to be played out. It has been used as a symbol for: notion of a journey – attaining greater understanding and with a coming of age, as explored in The…
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Surveys
Alongside pictorial landscape photography during the later part of the 19th Century ‘topographic’ or ‘proto-documentary’ approaches arose making use of the ability of the camera to record external phenomena. This coincided with a rapid rise in industry, imperialism and means of communication, notably the print media and telegraphy. The photographic process was believed to eliminate any subjectivity on…
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Documentary photographers today
Task Do your own research into the work and techniques of the Magnum agency photographers and include your findings in your learning log or blog. The list below represents a range of styles and approaches and has been selected to support your development and give a feeling of the industry today. Look briefly at the website of…
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The Decisive Moment
The idea of the decisive moment is underpinned by the notion that this is something that emerges from the scene, i.e. it happens independently of the viewer. Magnum stressed the ‘moment’ as being crucial to the interpretation and communication of the image. Henri Cartier Bresson It could be argued, though, that the decisive moment is effectively created by the…
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Dorothea Lange
Lange was finishing a month’s trip photographing migrant farmhands for what was then the Resettlement Administration. In 1960, Lange gave this account of the experience: “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…
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Early Social Documentary
To Do What moved or motivated the photographer to get hold of his or her camera and get involved? Where did it start? What was its purpose? Many of the early practitioners of documentary photography remain quite famous today within visual culture for the way that they contributed to the development of film and cinema.…
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Lewis Hine
Source: Wikipedia Lewis Wickes Hine (1874–1940) was an American sociologist and photographer. After his father died in an accident, he began working and saved his money for a college education. Hine studied sociology at the University of Chicago, Columbia University and New York University. Hine used his camera as a tool for social reform.Both Riis…
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Jacob Riis
Danish-born Jacob Riis (1849–1914) was a pioneer in social documentary photography which included identifiable people and was one of the first photographers to use the new technology of magnesium flash. Riis photographed the flop houses where people were stacked at night on every available horizontal space. Again these were usually immigrants and Riis showed the…
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Shirley Baker
Images on Mary Evans Picture Library Google Images Shirley Baker, (1932-2014), was one of the rare female photographers who chronicled life in the north of England from the 1950s onwards. Her street photography was in the ‘flaneuse’ tradition of Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Frank, whom she named as influences. Unposed snapshots of people going about their business…