documentary and the city

8/12/2019 Documentary and the City

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DOCUMENTARY AND THECITY

or WHERE IS THE STREET?



DOCUMENTARY AND THECITY




DOCUMENTARY AND THE

CITY




What is documentary? What ‘type’ of pictures are made under this name? A crucial dynamic: picture or proof ?



“From the specimen here given it is sufficiently manifest, that the whole cabinet of a Virtuoso and collector of old China might be depicted on paper in little more time than it would take him to make a written inventory describing it in the usual way. The more strange and fantastic the forms of his old teapots, the more advantage in having their pictures given instead of their descriptions. And should a thief afterwards purloin the treasures—if the mute testimony of the picture were to be produced against him in

court—it would certainly be evidence of a novel kind; but what

the judge and jury might say to it, is a matter which I leave to the speculation of those who possess legal acumen.”

William Henry Fox Talbot, The Pencil of Nature



“From the specimen here given it is sufficiently manifest, that the whole cabinet of a Virtuoso and collector of old China might be depicted on paper in little more time than it would take him to make a written inventory describing it in the usual way. The more strange and fantastic the forms of his old teapots, the more advantage in having their pictures given instead of their descriptions. And should a thief afterwards purloin the treasures—if the mute testimony of the picture were to be produced against him in

court—it would certainly be evidence of a novel kind; but what

the judge and jury might say to it, is a matter which I leave to the

speculation of those who possess legal acumen.”

William Henry Fox Talbot, The Pencil of Nature



Eadweard Muybridge, ‘Morning Call, 16th June, 1878’



Alphonse Bertillon, display stand in Exposition Universelle, Paris, 1889; precision equipment for the recording of data at crime scene



What is a document? What is documentary? A question of the real and relation to representation: to

giving an account. Real / Realism

Document / Documentary / Documentary style



What is a document? What is documentary? A question of the real and relation to representation: A

question of giving an account. Real / Realism




What is documentary photography?

The term !documentary" was first used on 8 February 1926, by the

filmmaker John Grierson. He used the term documentary in the NewYork Sun to describe Robert Flaherty"s film Moana , about the daily life

of Polynesian Islanders.



Grierson defines documentary as a kind of educational media: “the observation of the ordinary or the actual and the discovery within the actual of

the patterns which give it significance for civic education”

Not a ‘servile accumulation of fact’ but an “emotional map”

A search for “what actually moves: what hits the spectator at the midriff: what

yanks him up by the hair of the head or the plain boot straps to the plane of decent

seeing ”

cited in John Tagg, ‘The Plane of Decent Seing’, The Disciplinary Frame



John Tagg: “In the mutation from ‘document’ to ‘documentary’, however, we are dealing with

a new level of activity of the extended State… The history of ‘documentary’ is

therefore the history of a specific management of representation that has to be

located in the cultural strategy of a particular kind of governance: a hybrid of

discipline and spectacle; a strategy of management of meaning and identity”

document > documentary

… from surveillance to ‘a rhetoric of recruitment’ in his The Disciplinary Frame: Photographic Truths and the Capture of Meaning , 2009,

University of Minnesota Press, p.xxxii



Steve Edwards:

Four modes of documentary:

1. ‘Liberal’ documentary (1890s): Jacob Riis2. ‘New Deal’ and FSA approach (1930s): Walker Evans / Dorothea

Lange [Lewis Hine as key pre-cursor] 3. ‘New Documents’ (1950-60s) a subjectivised approach; RobertFrank / Diane Arbus

4. ‘Photo-conceptualism’ (1960-1970s): Ed Ruscha / Martha Rosler Martha Rosler: The Bowery in two inadequate descriptivesystems , 2012



Jacob Riis, Bandit’s Roost , c.1890



Lewis Hine Making Human Junk

1915



Walker Evans

Sidewalk in Vicksburg, Mississippi

1936



Walker Evans, Negro Barbershop Interior , 1936



Walker Evans:

“Documentary? That’s a very sophisticated and misleading word. And not really clear. You have to

have a sophisticated ear to receive that word. The term should be documentary style.

An example of a literal document would be a police photograph of a murder scene. You see, a

document has use, whereas art is really useless. Therefore art is never a document, though it

certainly can adopt that style.”

Interview with Leslie Katz, Photography in Print , ed. Vicki Goldberg



Dorothea Lange White Angel Breadline, San Francisco

1933



Dorothea Lange, Ex-Tenant Farmer on Relief Grant in the Imperial Valley, California, 1937



Helen Levitt Untitled, New York

c.1942



Robert Frank, From the Bus, New York , 1958



Robert Frank

View from Hotel Window – Butte, Montana 1954-56



Lee Friedlander New York

1963



Diane Arbus, Tattooed Man at a Carnival , 1970



Martha Rosler

The Bowery in two inadequate descriptive systems

1974-5



Key principles of street photography (from Clive Scott Street Photography, 2007) *Street photography is aligned to both documentary and ‘art’-photography

*It can be seen to move through a number of paradigms:

from France in 1920s (Brassai, Andre Kertesz, Henri Cartier-Bresson)

to the U.S. in the 1950s (Lee Friedlander, Diane Arbus, William Klein)

via precursors (Eugene Atget, the Seeberger Brothers)

and becoming an international form (Daido Moriyami, Raghubir Singh) *A mode of photography that includes: ‘staccato, jotted style’ a speed of gesture and glance (the fleeting instant) haptic impression and forceful expression… (a question of types of attention and experience) an interest in ‘fringe’ areas (the criminal, the trash, the night…) posing a uniform (mass) against a multiform (chaos, the singular) – the crowd and the street



Andre Kertesz

Meudon, Paris 1928



Manuel Alvarez Bravo Laughing Mannequins 1930



Manuel Alvarez Bravo Optical Parable

1931



Bill Brandt Footsteps Coming Nearer 1933-36



Robert Doisneau Be-bop-en-cave, Vieux-Colombie

1948



Lewis Hine “I wanted to show things that had to be corrected. I wanted to show things that had to

be appreciated.”

Henri Cartier-Bresson

“Poetry includes two elements which are suddenly in conflict – #a spark between two

elements”




Athens 1953



Elliott Erwitt Las Vegas

1954



William Klein

Candy Store, Amsterdam Avenue, New York

1954-55



Daido Moriyama Stray Dog, Misawa

1971



Eugene Atget Au Griffon, 39 Quai de l'Horloge

c.1903

The street as a particular ‘mode’

A way of experiencing urban life…

A way of traversing particular spaces



Georg Simmel: ‘Bridge and Door’

“The people who first built a path between two places performed one of the greatest human

achievements… The will to connection had become a shaping of things, a shaping that was

available to the will at every repetition, without still being dependent on its frequency or rarity.”

Human activity is based on connections and separations as exemplified by two key structures: *bridge – that which ‘connects’ that which otherwise was without relation

*door – that which can allow access but also deny access – a simultaneous connector and separator



Eugene Atget

Bridge, Parc Monceau, Paris, France

c.1900



Eugene Atget Door, Hôtel de Gouffier, Paris, France

& Door, Hôtel de Chateaubriand, Paris, Franceboth c.1900



Eugene Atget The Cabaret of Hell, Boulevard de Clichy c.1900



Marcel Duchamp: “The question of the shop windows .·. To undergo the interrogation of shop windows .·. The exigency of the shop window .·. The shop window proof of the existence of the outside world .·. When one undergoes the examination of the shop window, one also pronounces one's

own sentence. In fact one's choice is 'round trip.' From the demands of the shop

windows, from the inevitable response to the shop windows, my choice is determined...”

The Essential Writings of Marcel Duchamp: p.74



Eugene Atget Boutique automobile, avenue de la Grande Armée

1924-5



Eugene Atget

Boulevard de Strasbourg , 1912 Balcon, 17 rue du Petit-Pont, 1913



Lee Friedlander New York State& Baltimore, Maryland 1965



Photography:

window or mirror? Lee Friedlander Midwestern, United States 1966 & Las Vegas, Nevada 2002



Eugene Atget Organ-grinder , 1898-1899

Postman, 1899-1900



Eugene Atget Pavers c.1900



How is a street ‘made’? What is the relation between its elements?

Is the ‘street’ a collection of people, the production of people, the

arrangement and relation of people to place…



Henri Lefebvre and The Production of Space…

To think of the street: *an ‘abstract’ space: one that is planned, designed… *a ‘lived’ space: one that is inhabited and practiced… Two forms of producing space.



The street as a site for a number of different activities and functions: *entertainment *communication

*consumption

The ‘street’ is a name for that which is not only a route for travelling, but also a

particular mode of experiencing public life within an increasingly urbanized

experience.

The urban space [the street] is not just ‘where’ we are, it predicates ‘how’ we act and

experience…



Brassai Paving Stones

c.1930-2

The notion of a street as a physical space: a space that can be viewed ‘askance’ The surrealist street as a site not merely of ‘everyday’ but also of the ‘magical

circumstantial’ – a site where profane illumination might happen…



A question: not merely ‘where’ is the street… but, ‘when’ is the street…

Brassai Paris at Night 1933



And…. What is a street called? How does this specify a locale?

Bill Brandt A Snicket in Halifax

c.1937



Andre Kertesz

Pavement

1929



Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

Gutter 1925



Daido Moriyami front cover for Record no.1

1972



A SPHERE OF DISTINCT TRAJECTORIES A SPACE OF DIFFERENT MOVEMENTS AND TRAJECTORIES…



Wolfgang Tillmans

rat, disappearing

1995



Wolfgang Tillmans

rat on trash bags 1995



Bruce Gilden

2013

shown online as

Deep-Fried America on a Stick

at http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/

deep-fried-america-on-a-stick-0000144- v20n11?Contentpage=-1 and as

Postcards from America at http://

postcardsfromamerica.tumblr.com



Bruce Gilden2013



Paul Strand Blind

1916



Paul Strand Wall Street, New York

1915



Paul Strand From the El 1915



Donovan Wylie Citizen, Miami, Florida 2013



Jacob Aue Sobol Milwaukee, Wisconsin

2013



Different movements… ‘action’ or ‘trace’…



Lázló Moholy-Nagy

Parking Lot, Chicago

1938

Jacob Aue Sobol

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

2013



Jacob Aue Sobol from I, Tokyo



How is the street the ‘carrier’ for things… A particular form of conduit A site of conduction

How is space is spaced, structured?What falls out? Space is not ‘continuous’ but rather is stratified



La Revolution Surrealiste

No.11, 1928

How to look for that which ‘falls out’ of representation?

How to look into the ‘underneath’of the street…

To ‘search the gutter’ for a subject…



Dora Maar Untitled 1935



The city and dream-work… or, the dream-work of the city…

Brassai Statue of Marshal Ney in the fog

c.1932



Wolfgang Tillmans

spread from Zacheta Ermutigung

2011



Tod Papageorge Central Park

1982



Jeff Wall Citizen

1996



Andre Kertesz

Quai de Bercy 1926 The object that is ‘known’ but that is ‘veiled’ / mysterious…



Umbo Uncanny Street 1928




Paris 1932

The activity that is of the ‘gutter’…



Daido Moriyama Provoke, No.2 1969



Nobuyoshi Araki Tokyo: A City Headed for Death 1993



Nobuyoshi Araki Tokyo Lucky Hole

1985



Brassai,

Graffiti de la Série III, Naissance du visage,

c.1930

The activity that turns a ‘place’ into a ‘space’



Helen Levitt New York

c.1939



Paul Graham

New Europe

1986-1992



Richard Misrach

from Destroy This Memory 2010




Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life

Place is the which is defined by the ‘proper’: a distinct and stable location…

Space is “intersections of mobile elements… Space occurs as the effect

produced by the operations that orient it, situate it, temporalise it…”

“Thus the street geometrically defined by urban planning is transformed into

a space by walkers.”



Bruce Gilden

USA, New York City 1984



Bruce Gilden

JAPAN, Tokyo 1999



Jacob Aue Sobol Milwaukee, Wisconsin

2013




Mexico City 1934



Jacques-Henri Lartigue Au Sentier de la Vertu

1912



Jacques-Henri Lartigue Avenue du Bois de Boulogue, Paris 1911



Jacques-Henri Lartigue Losers at the Auteuil Races 1911



The ‘straight-up’ The street as site of fashionable display…



The Street as relational space…

A place where people display themselves to others. The development of the urban individual(Georg Simmel, ‘The Metropolis and Mental Life’)

Street fashion as distinct from that which is planned… not whatthe designer produces, but about the manner in which it is worn…




Rouen, France

1929



Wolfgang Tillmans

Circle Line

2000



Richard Avedon,American Harpers Bazaar ,

September 1954



William Klein, American Vogue, July 1959



William Klein

French Vogue 1960



Alasdair McLellan

Together that summer we raised some hell, yeah! 2013



Alasdair McLellan

Vogue, March, 2014




Madrid 1933



Walker Evans

Torn Movie Poster 1930



Walker Evans

Houses and Billboards in Atlanta 1936



Walker Evans

Penny Picture Display, Savannah 1936



Berenice Abbott Newsstand, East 32nd Street and Third Avenue, Manhattan

1935



William Klein

Gun, Gun, Gun, New York

1955



Lee Friedlander Galax, Virginia 1962



Richard Prince Untitled (three men looking in the same direction)

1978



Where is the street here? Is this an issue of ‘public display’? The mediated nature of ‘everyday life’? The street as a place to ‘find’ images… The street as a place where images circulate…



Guy Debord:

“The spectacle is not a collection of images,

rather, it is a social relationship between people that is

mediated by images.”

The Society of the Spectacle



Paul Virillio: “The screen abruptly became the town square.”

‘The Overexposed City’



Paul Virillio: “The screen abruptly became the town square.”

‘The Overexposed City’ Lee Friedlander Monsey, New York, 1963 &

Wahington D.C., 1962



Paul Virillio: ‘The Overexposed City’

Nina Berman



Hedge

2010

Nina Berman



Hedge

2010



Graffiti from Tunisia 2011