Documentary photography
The documentary photography is a type of photography whose motivation is to produce a photographic document to be used for the holding of the reality, as time document, as an appeal or warning. However, these photographic documents make it not an objective but a subjective or ideological consideration mostly with socially critical background dar.
The term "document" is derived from the Latin word documentum = demonstrative certificate.
The term " documentary photography " was coined in the U.S. in the 1930s in connection with the Great Depression. The value of documentary photography is mostly in looking beyond the mere reproduction of the real beyond socially critical inventory, such as Robert Frank and Manuel Rivera- Ortiz.
Characteristics of documentary photography
Documentary photography means even more than purely artistic photography a personal confession of the photographer. It shows what he sees on the ground with the camera takes us when he is traveling. His gaze is preferable to that which is done without fuss, has made so obvious invisible in everyday life or in ritualized procedures that it slips of perception.
Prehistory
In the society of the 19th century, the photographic image is first attributed by its nature a documentary function. So already calls the "British Journal of Photography " to create a comprehensive archive of photographs and get the documents for future generations.
In this framework, the first attempts of documentary photography will take place:
Origin of the documentary photography as an independent genus
Due to the social impact of the global economic crisis, the U.S. government under President Franklin Roosevelt looks to comprehensive social reforms, also called, compelled New Deal. In this context, the government wanted above all to convince the American people of the necessity of their actions in order to win support for their policies. 1935 are therefore of the Resettlement Administration ( later renamed the Farm Security Administration ) commissioned photographers to create a large-scale photographic documentation of rural life in America. They should represent the impoverished rural population worthy and aesthetically, but in no artistic. This new kind of photography called " documentary photography " to secede from the artistic photography. Key elements of documentary photography are:
- The demonstration of social ills
- Aesthetic character, but which is as realistic as possible and of course
- Not documenting an event, but the social conditions based on multiple photographs in a series of photographs
- The photo as a message that goes beyond the text
- Documentary photography usually with a political background, with a claim to political influence
- Photographing as a public character
It was in this context, so for the first time the attempt of a formal and organized movement documentary character. Significant photographers of that time in the United States, among others:
- Dorothea Lange
- Russell Lee
- Walker Evans
- Arthur Rothstein
In Germany, the documentary photographer August Sander has gained importance with ordered according to professions portraits in the first decades of the 20th century.
Documentary Photography after 1945
After 1945, the documentary photography had a heavier stand Great documentary photographers of the postwar period, as W. Eugene Smith, Diane Arbus, Robert Frank, William Klein, Mary Ellen Mark were either lone wolves, or they were forced illustrated as a story - suppliers for the large magazines ( especially life ) to work. Squeezed into the economic logic of increasing circulation, find independent political positions less and less space. One encounters the photos of independent documentary photographers now common in museums than in public journals. This is mainly due to the transformation of the public photos from the documentary photography together for photojournalism. The images must always be current, reducing the time it takes a series of photos to appear long. And by the flood of information, it seems to be more economical to tell as many stories to devote as a story several pages and omit other information. In addition, particularly political institutions are aware at least since the Vietnam War, the effect of the photo as a weapon. This leads to difficult relations of production, to the embedded journalism, in which all the resulting photos are first filtered by the government.
Since the beginning of the new millennium, a new trend is emerging. Several museums and scientific institutions reflect the power of documentary photography. In the summer of 2009 showed the Budapest Ludwig Museum under the title " Things are drawing to a crisis " a show of social documentary photography in the late 1920s and the 1930s. Also In 2009, the photographer, critic and curator Jorge Ribalta the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona under the title " Universal Archive» an exhibition on the history of documentary photography in the 20th century together. 2010, a major international conference on the history of social documentary photography movement of workers took place in Madrid in the Reina Sofia Museum.
A recent documentary photographer of the present is Manuel Rivera- Ortiz, who documented as an independent photographer living conditions of people in developing countries. Rivera Ortiz grew up in poor circumstances in rural Puerto Rico in 1970 years. Influenced by this experience, called Rivera -Ortiz his work as a celebration of life (A Celebration of Life ), in poverty. Rivera -Ortiz has photographed and Cuba, among others, compared the living conditions he had seen there, with the Puerto Rico of his childhood. He has also documented the dignity of the Dalit caste ( " untouchables " ) in India, as well as the living conditions of the Aymara in the arid plateau of Bolivia. Rivera -Ortiz has also published work on Kenya, Turkey or Thailand.
Current famous documentary photographers are:
- Steve McCurry
- Robert Frank
- Manuel Rivera -Ortiz
For the art
Since the late 1970s, documentary photography has received increasingly a place in art galleries and museums in addition to art photography. Luc Delahaye, Manuel Rivera -Ortiz and the members of VII Photo Agency are among the documentary photographers whose images are regularly exhibited in galleries and museums.
See also: History and evolution of photography, documentary, social documentary photography