Joseph Nicéphore Niépce (1826) ‘View from a window at La Gras’
First accurate photograph, has a power
James Nachtwey
Contract between photographer and audience / Role – not just recording events, involving himself with society / images persuade / exposing for benefit of humanity – how can this be neutral? / Inhumanities – humanist agenda / sense of empathy / bonds – subject – audience – photographer
William Edward Kilburn-‘The Great Chartist Meeting At The Common’ 1848
Not interfering with the photographs / removed for the action of the scene / these images become part of history
Francis Firth (1857) – Entrance to great temple
Objectivity / fantasy
Henri-Cartier Bresson
“Photography achieves its highest distinction – reflecting the universality of the human condition in a never-to-be-retrieved fraction of a second”
Paris - Place de l'Europe - Gare Saint Lazare. 1932. -
His images are depictions of everyday / Aesthetic – perfect composition / Dancers in the background reflected by the man jumping over the puddle / think about the importance of aesthetic in documentary photography
Jacob Riis - (1888) ‘Bandits Roost’ / (1887) ‘A growler gang in session (Robbing a lush)’
Famous for bandit roost images – the other half / morbid fascination – voyeurism / the rich spying on the poor / composition – people posing – looking at the camera / compromise – how the photographer perceives their subject and how they want to be perceived / set up images
Lewis Hine, (1908) ‘Child Labourers in glassworks, Indiana’
Humanity / neutrality – still had a social campaign presented as real people
Farm security administration photographers –
Director Roy Stryker / Depression- 11 million unemployed / Mass migration of farm labourers ‘Oakies’ / the photograph as both photojournalism and emotive lobbying tool
Document migrants / help raise funds to resettle migrants / emotive lobbying tool / social agenda – instructed to what photos to take – letters
Margaret Bourke- White - ‘Sharecroppers Home’ 1937
Boy and dog – sentimental / feel pity / sorry for subject / agenda
Dorothea Lange (1936) ‘Migrant Mother’
Became the ‘image’ for the great depression / selective representation of the world / Madonna and child device – aesthetics / rejected images – too emotional – doesn’t serve agendas purpose / arranging her subjects / composition – different forms of communication / chosen image says less – doesn’t look so innocent and needy
Walker Evans - Graveyard, Houses & Steel Mill, Bethlehem, Pennysylvania, 1935
Depicting everyday life in the 30’s / stylised - aesthetics / Momento-mori – shows ideas of prison – work/live/die – steel works and a graveyard with houses in the middle
John Lamprey (1868) ‘Front & Profile views of a malayan male’
Supposedly for scientific purposes – disguise / fascination with exotic people / used to justify that black was inferior to white
Carl Dammann ‘Ethnographic & Photographic Gallery of Various Races of Mankind, 1870-1
Ethnography. Photography just invented, used as a tool for scientific study / recording of different non-western races. These photos would have perhaps served as more of a curiosity - link to body worlds - or sensationalistic public exhibit.
Reflection of societies attitudes to ‘exotic’ races. - feeding prejudices -’lower races’ / Impersonal nature of the photographic record implies that the images are trustworthy. / Note that the defining characteristics were similar to those of criminals - ape-like jaw etc.
Cesare Lombroso - ‘portrait of melancholy’ c.1890
Portraits of Italian & German Criminals’ 1889
Unsurprisingly photography became the defining tool ‘Scientific’ study of criminals to determine if there is any defining physiognomic characteristics of a criminal.
Lombroso concluded that ‘their chins are often small and receding, like children, or excessively long, like apes - notice the attachment of negative signified to the criminal.
Link to Vitruvian Man - Lombroso states that the arms exceeded the total height… ape like’ Lombroso aimed to produce a foolproof blank of the recognisable stigmata that could be used in criminal science, even to the extent that it could be used to determine if someone was guilty!
Many of the stigmata defined were the same as those that had been used to define ‘lower races’ in ethnography
Mass Observation 1937-1960’s
Tom Harrison (anthropologist) / Charles Madge (poet) / Humphrey Jennings (filmmaker) / Humphrey Spender (photographer)
Robert Capa ‘Normandy, France’ 1945
Suggestions that he has used this blue effect on purpose / trick photography / connotes bombs going of and general chaos of war
Magnum Group
Founded in 1947 by Cartier-Bresson & Capa / Ethos of documenting the world & its social problems / Internationalism & Mobility
International group of photographers / look at aesthetics / see how people represent the world in different ways
Robert Capa ‘The Falling Soldier’ 1936 / Nick Ut (1972) ‘Accidental Napalm Attack’ / Don McCullin (1968) ‘Shell Shocked Soldier’
Robert Haeberle (1969)
People about to be shot / executed / last moment in peoples life – inhumanity – what is the photographers role / moral question / social agenda / show horrors of war
William Klein, Broadway and 103rd Street New York , 1954-55
Sense of hostile engagement - not the invisible observer like Cartier Bresson
William Klein, Dance in Brooklyn 1955
One of the better known pictures taken in New York, two kids play up for the camera. On the left a young girl throws back her head and lifts a finger 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.
Bernd & Hilla Becher - Winding towers france germany belgium in 15 parts
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. And so what we actually need is to “construct something,” something “artificial,” “posed.”
Bertolt Brecht (1931)
Gillian Wearing - ‘Signs That Say What You Want Them To Say’ 1992-3
Postmodern link between art & documentary. Photographers agenda is largely removed. Audience allowed to portray their own agenda.
Key features of documentary photography
-They offer a humanitarian perspective
-They tend to portray social & 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 & un-manipulated
