photog as docu
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photog as docuTRANSCRIPT
The Photograph as Document
• a short history of Documentary photography• Images of the working class/poverty• Reporting and war• Photographing ‘other’ cultures• The concept of the decisive moment• The constructed document
William Edward Kilburn ‘The Great Chartist Meeting At The Common’ 1848
2nd invention of photography 1839-‐ this photo taken in Eirst 10 years of print photography
Grahame Clarke• In many contexts the notion of a literal and objective record of ‘history ‘ is
a limited illusion. It ignores the entire cultural and social background against which the image was taken, just as it renders the photographer neutral, passive and invisible recorder of the scene
Jacob Riis ‘Bandit's Roost,59 1/2 Mulberry Street’ 1888Social reformers seeking to educate the middle class through photography-‐
usually with a moral message
Jacob A. Riis A Growler Gang in Session (Robbing a Lush), 1887
Street Arabs -‐Riis’ term for the lawless youth -‐ representational of the malaise of the nation.Mock up image. JR got the children to mug one of their own and pose. Then paid them all in cigarettes.
Lewis Hine, Russian steel workers, Homestead, Pa., 1908
Less about propaganda more about the human conditionStark contrast to Riis. Russian immigrants are portrayed as poor etc. but with a steely dignity and honour -‐ good cases for American citizenship.Togetherness / humanityDescribes himself as a sociological photographer-‐ child labour etc and his work does bring about real changes in the lawDuffer boy (1909)
Hine never exploits-‐ individuals retain a sense of self rather than standing for poverty
F.S.A.(Farm Security Administration)
Margeret Bourke-‐White‘Sharecroppers Home’1937
LIFE magazine-‐ camera is essential to the presentation of the story cf Rankin on Life photographers.Black and white images told the story in companion with the text and the two conEirmed each others truth.
Russel Lee‘Interior Of A Black Farmers House’1939
Clarke says russell lees interior because he doesn’t direct us what to read, he merely
records it, we don’t know where to look or what story is being told-‐ no visual literacy
Dorothea Lange‘Migrant Mother’1936
“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 I do remember she asked me no questions. I made 5 exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her her name or her history…”Madonna and child
Walker EvansFloyd Burroughs (George Gudger), Hale County, Alabama,1936.
Clarke suggests a set of isual strategies are employed to provoke and emotional response, the kind
which might result in charitable giving
Evans depicts the myth of America-‐ comments on the nation in American photographs 1938 and Let us now praise Famous Men (1941) with James Agee
Coca cola shack 1935
Walker Evans ‘Graveyard, Houses & Steel Mill, Bethlehem, Pennysylvania’, 1935
Clarke suggests that this image is Evans putting his own vision of America to rest
Bill Brandt‘Northumberland Miner at His Evening Meal’1937
Ordinary lives become part of museum cultureImage of the English class systemEvery aspect of the image has a larger meaning nothing is neutral
Robert Frank ‘Parade -‐ Hoboken, New Jersey’ 1958Book redeEines documentary in terms of it’s radical styleAn outsider looking in -‐SwissFlag as symbol recurs throughoutPost war America ‘as if the psyche of the culture has been laid bare’Parade as celebration of things American, but we only see the onlookers, not even then as there faces
are obscured.
William Klein St Patrick's Day, Fifth Avenue 1954-‐55
Immigrant communities
William Klein Dance in Brooklyn 1955
One of the better-‐known pictures took in New York, two kids play up for the camera. On the left a young girl throws back her head and lifts a Einger to the sky and the top of the frame. The boy on the right is raising his hand to his cap in a kind of salute also; smaller than the girl, the blurring of his face creates a white beard, making him into a slightly sinister gnome. Everything is blurred and extremely grainy, contrast harsh, the street derelict, with a lamppost towards the right of picture visually balancing the girl's gesture.
Magnum group
• Founded in 1947 by Cartier-‐Bresson & Capa• Ethos of documenting the world & its social problems• Internationalism & Mobility
Henri Cartier Bresson: Magnum Leica RangeEinder camera. C. 1950 of a similar type to that used byH C-‐B
The Decisive Moment
• “photography achieves its highest distinction – reElecting the universality of the human condition in a never-‐to-‐be-‐retrieved fraction of a second”
» (Cartier-‐Bresson)
Henri Cartier BressonFRANCE. Paris. Place de l'Europe. Gare Saint Lazare. 1932.
Classic decisive moment. Pose of man jumping the puddle in the foreground mirrors the pose of the dancer in the background. Escape from the banality of the everydayThe scene is almost like a stage set that the photographer has found, waiting for the moment to strikethe camera was an instrument to seize an instant from the Elux.
Robert Capa ‘The Falling Soldier’ 1936
The so-‐called "falling soldier" was not photographed near Cerro Muriano in Andalusia, as has been claimed, but about 50km to the south-‐west, near the town of Espejo far from the frontline on a day when there was no military action, a Catalan newspaper claims."Capa photographed his
soldier at a location where there was no dighting," wrote the daily El
Periodico on Friday. The paper carried out a detailed study of Capa's pictures taken in September 1936, three months after the condlict broke out.
Robert Capa ‘Normandy, France’ 1945
George Rodger‘Bergen-‐Belsen Concentration Camp’1945
Respectful distance from the subjectHis work in anchored in history and in to differenceHe never exploits or reduces to the sensational-‐ easy to do in sucha dramatic situation
Rodger Korango Nuba Tribesmen, Victor of a wrestling contest (1949)
Lee Miller Buchenwald 1945
Hung Cong Ut, ‘Accidental Napalm Attack, 1972Moral connundrum as well as a moment of extreme human suffereing
We can read it as an anti-‐war image in that it exposes the real effects of the ‘accident’But the sound’ of the image seems to obscure that message even
Robert Haeberle‘People About to be Shot’1969
My Lai massacre harrowingPhotographer yells ‘hold it!‘ before the shooting so that effectively shoots Eirst to catch the drama of the moments before death.
Don McCullin‘Shell Shocked Soldier’1968
Clarke says after this there seems little left to photographExcept the human toll of war which seems to be encapsulated in Mc Cullins photoAfter Vietnam he went on to photograph children and landscapes as a retreat from the unpicturble.
Documentary constructed: William Neidich (1989)
Contra-‐Curtis Cover-‐ups: Early american cover-‐ups no.7Seeks to rewrite American history to include the missing imagesFakes history to question the mythical past and show what was never seen/photographed-‐ Eilm biasUses 19th century processes
Edward Curtis Native North Americans (early20th century)
Bruno Barbey ‘Left Wing Riot Protesting The Building Of The New Narito Airport’, 1972
Riot is deElected in favour of a concern with colour and form-‐ aesthetic rather than political or social impact
Jeremy Deller ‘The Battle Of Orgreave’ 2001
The Battle of Orgreave by Turner Prize winning artist Jeremy Deller is a spectacular historical re-‐enactment of the events of 18 June 1984. That year the National Union of Mineworkers went on strike. The dispute lasted for over a year and was the most bitterly-‐fought since the general strike of 1926.