Revolutionary design in Russia (Seminar)

The Document

Joseph Nicephore Niepce

Took what is considered the first ever photograph. It is called 'View From a Window at La Gras'.

James Nachtwey-

Is a documentary who is noted for documenting war. 'I have been a witness and these virtues are my testimony. The events I have recorded must not be forgotten and must not be repeated'

Frances Firth -

'Entrance to the Great Temple' where photographers go against generic documentation as the image depicts an Egyptian temple the way the Western eye would like to see it

Photographers capture reality, there is always a reason behind photography whether it is political, social or historical. The photographer will not effect the image themselves.

The Decisive moment

“Photography achieves its highest distinction-reflecting the universality of the human condition in a never-to-be retrieved fraction of a second”

Henri Cartier Bresson (1908-2004)

Jacob Riis

(1888) 'Bandits Roost' Is a constructed photograph which depicts people in a slum who are very much aware of the photographers presence. Riis has set up a middle class fantasy of lower class life in the slums. The validity of documentation can be questioned as Risse used to bribe the poor subjects with cigarettes and such things to pose for him.

Lewis Hine- Was a sociologist in terms of photography. He had left wing beliefs and photographed the working class to glorify them. There was no personal gain involved.

FSA Photographers (Farm Security Administration)

• Roy Stryker founded the program
• At the time 11 million people over America were unemployed in the depression
• Mass migration of farmers/labourers
• The photography was used as both photojournalism and emotive lobby tool

Photographers were given instructions of what to record. The reality of what was to be recored had been pre-determined

Margaret Bourke-White- 'Sharecroppers Home' (1937) is a depiction of abject poverty

Dorothea Lange

War/conflict photography-

Robert Capa 'Normandy, France' 1945

Magnum Group

• Founded in 1947 by Carier-Bresson and Capa
• Ethos of documenting the world and its social problems
• Internationalism and mobility

Robert Capa- 'The falling solider' (1936)

Don McCullin (1968) 'Shell shocked solider'

Robert Harberle (1969)

William Klein- St Patrick's Day, Fifth Avenue 1954-55

Conceptual Art

With photography in conceptual art, the purpose was to create a problem that cannot be solved. Selling documentary photographs for thousands of pounds makes conceptual art fail.

Critical Realism

A photograph of a Krupp factory or the AEG says practically nothing about these institutions. Reality itself has shifted into the realm of the functional. The reification of human relationships, such as the factory, no longer betrays anything about these relationships, such as the factory, no longer betrays anything about these relationships. And so what we actually need is to “construct something,” Something “artificial” “posed”

Bertolt Brecht (1931)

Jeff Wall (1992) Dead soldiers talk

Gillian Wearing Signs that say that you want them to say 1992-3

Jeremy Deller (2001) 'Battle of Orgreave'

Key Features of Documentary Photography

• They offer a humanitarian perspective
• They tend to portray social and political situations
• They purport to be objective to the facts of the situation
• People tend to form the subject matter
• The images tend to be straightforward and unmanipulated

Summary