The Development of Documentary Photography

Lecture Notes - Research

Plate cameras – Expensive

Matthew Brady – war photojournalism – American civil war – graphic images

Invention of Leica – 1920’s

Robert Capa – D-Day Landings – 1944 – contract photographer – photographed a ‘alone soldier’ which is his preferred photograph from all he taken

Don McCullin – war photographer but also did a homeless project, 1970’s.

Magnum photos – set up during second world war

Documentary

Garry Winogrand – Central Park Zoo – 1967 – photographing a couple carrying their pet monkeys

Joel Meyerowitz

New Topographics

Ansel Adams – The Tetons and the Snake River – Taken on a Plate Camera – 1942 (negative) – 1980 (print)

Thomas Struth – the cars represent the people in the photographs

Andreas Gursky – Rhein II – 1999

After Math Photography

Joel Meyerowitz – photographed a crime scene but nobody else was allowed in because it couldn’t be documented.

Quote – David Campany – Documentary Evidence

Meyerowitz’ imagery is not so much the trace of an event as the trace of the trace of an event. His ‘late’ photography is a particularly clear instance of an approach that is becoming a commonplace use of the medium. What are we to make of the highly visible turn toward photographing the aftermath of events – traces, fragments, empty buildings, empty streets, damage to the body and damage to the world? These images appear to us as particularly static, often sombre and quite ‘straight’ kinds of pictures. They assume an aesthetic of utility closer to forensic photography than traditional photojournalism. They are an example what Peter Wollen has called ‘cool photography’ as opposed to the dramatic ‘hot’ photography of events. Sometimes we can see that something has happened, sometimes we are left to imagine or project it, or to be informed about it by other means. The images often contain no people, but a lot of remnants of activity.