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| Political rage against Arthur Rothstein's staged image, 1936. More: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/18/the-case-of-the-inappropriate-alarm-clock-part-1/#more-11487 |
Documentary and Photojournalism: Issues and Definitions
Chapter author Derrick Price begins by noting that documentary has been described variously as a form, a genre, a tradition, a style, a movement and a practice. To arrive at some understanding of something so intractable, he finds it necessary to examine the history of documentary practices, products, practitioners, and consumers.
The word documentary was first used in 1926 in relation to cinema and a particular kind of film in opposition to Hollywood fiction. Solomon-Godeau (1991) has observed that almost all 19th century photography can be described as documentary. While most academics concede that documentary has no defining style or technique, what sets it apart is its basis in investigation and “a goal beyond the production of a fine print.” (Ohrn 1980) In many cases, the photographer’s intention is not only to observe, but in doing so to bring attention that may change the conditions documented.
It was only in the 1830’s that the word journalism entered the English language. This was a period marked by large shifts of population and the growth of urban centers peopled by an educated middle class with an appetite for news about the world. Images were seen as means of verifying the claims of stories printed in newspapers. Photos were made by machines, which were governed by rules of science. They were seen to be authentic, objective, and therefore incapable of deception. Price cites several examples of fraudulent use of images dating back to the late 19th century to to demonstrate that deception was not unknown and to explain how practices came to be adopted to distinguish genuine from fake, such as printing the negative’s black border around the image to show nothing had been cropped. Editors and photographers also established practices intended to maintain the integrity of the document, such as using only natural light and protecting the veracity of the scene (by moving or rearranging elements).
Price then wanders off for several paragraphs to ponder the nature of “the real.” If, he asks, something that looks like a photo can be made entirely on the computer, then what exactly is a photograph? Barthes’ definition of an image as an indexical sign, as a product pointing to something that happened in the world, as a historical referent, may no longer be meaningful. Price wonders, then, if the photograph’s authenticity was more a product of practice and discourse than the image itself. Taking this a step further, Price suggests no reality apart from our construction of it, and that one of the tools in the construction process is photography.
Surveys and Social Facts
Price suggests the credibility of the camera derived from its ability to confirm visually what the public had already learned through other sources. He refers to 19th century surveys of the working poor (in the UK and US), often government requests to document living conditions of the the working class. Because these photos showed exactly what people thought they would show, photography was more readily accepted as being able to reproduce reality.
One of the earliest modes of photography appears to have been what we might today call street photography, but focused almost entirely on the poor. These were photos made of “others” for the consumption of the educated classes. Price exemplifies the discussion with Danish-born Jacob Riis, who documented America’s urban poor. He see Riis as pursuing his subjects like a hunter pursues game. His subjects had no voice in how they were recorded or presented. They were, perhaps not just to Riis but to the larger society, passive victims of poverty, rather than agents capable of managing their own lives.
This was distinctly not the case with the bourgeoisie. Price notes there was more sensitivity when cameras were turned on them. There are apparently articles from the popular press deploring the practice of photographers capturing images of the respectable without their consent. Clearly, they were to have some say in how they were presented.
It is also worth noting that even though photography was born in age of rapid economic transition, fascination with the working class did not extend to documenting their actual work. This may be in part because of ideas of what constituted the proper subject for photographs.
Fascination with the other can be seen as well in presentations of women (not covered in this chapter) and colonials. Price argues that the British penchant for collecting and managing data extended to photographic anthropological inquiries, resulting in a body of photographs seeking to document the differences among different racial, ethnic, and national groups. The product was a collection of images designed to appeal to the western viewer’s prejudice of cultural superiority, pictures of savages and primitives (many in states of undress). In this way the photograph did not so much create a record of the “real,” as contribute to its construction. (Ryan 1997)
The same might be said of war photography, the camera being an important tool in recording and promoting organized state violence. In the lead up to the US Civil War there was huge demand for photos of young men in uniform leaving for the front. Photographers and printers also did big business in prints of generals and other leading military commanders. While the war was the first to be extensively documented, there were few photos of the actual fighting (a result of the bulky equipment and slow exposures required in that age). Price glosses over WWI and I suspect there is more here to tell. Regarding WWII he notes it marks the first photographic and journalistic interest in non-combatants.
Having learned the value of controlling images, military authorities have compelled those wishing to create unmediated documents to work some distance from them. For some this has resulted in new forms of reportage that are “more meditation on the nature of war than direct reportage” (p90). Price cites the work of Luc Delahaye and Paul Seawright. The subject of the work has shifted from that of the photographer as reporter of military movements and engagements, to documentarian of war’s suffering.
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