William Edward Kilburn 'The great chartist meeting at the common' 1948
Use of the camera to privilage certain moments in history, provides us with evidence that this event happened. The photographer is an invisible onlooker, the presence is not acknowledged by the people in the photo. This is the idea that goes into documentary photography.
In many contexts the notion of a liiteral and objective record of history is a limited illusio. It ignores the entire cultural
'How the other half live' Jacob Riis 1890, it is a push for social reform.
Bandit roost, one social group is viewing another social group and is being told what to think by the photographer through lectures. Air of menace could be read into the kind of men that are hanging out on the side of the street. Crime seems to be indicated in the image, the figures in the image are interested in whats happening 'stranger in the midst' Observed moment that they're hanging about but really they're intrigued by his presence and his technology.
'A growler in session' The image is constructed, got the children to reenact the image and paid them in cigarettes.
Lewis Hine, 'Russian steel workers' 1908. Respect given to them as people, we feel like they have a presence, relationship between us and the men because of eye contact.
Duffer boy' Instead of shocking the viewer by showing poor, he shows real people working, just reporting the situation.
F.S.A (Farm Security Administration)
Margeret Bourke-White 'Sharecroppers home' 1937. Images not seen as subjective they're meant to be objective. Pictures of cars in the newspapers on the wall, representing the American dream but the drama of the opposite of that of the poor boy in the doorway.
'Interior of a black farmers house' Russel Lee. No human presence but instead the wall and drawers illustrate poverty.
Dorothea Lange 'Migrant Mother' 1936. She doesn't ask for the ladies name or talks to her, the image becomes everything. Elevation to religious status because it looks like Mary and her child. The other image provide us with context because we get more background image.
Walker Evans. Image has not been cropped framed as it was taken, aesthetisising poverty, making poverty look beautiful as if the human spirit is rising above the conditions.
Abandoned coca cola shack, objectification of the poor
Walker Evans putting his idea of America to rest.
Imply crampped condition, making of ordinary lives into a museum culture. Creating distance from the subject, construction of the working class.
William Klein photographing immigrant communities less voyeuristic. Captures movement of the city
Magnum group
Fouded in 1947 by Cartier-Bresson and Capa
Camera tachnologies allow photographies to have seamles disappearance into a crowd meaning the subject is unaware, air of mystery in the photograph. 'Photography achieve its highest distinction-reflecting the universality of the human condition in a never to be...
Bresson sees the world as a stage and he's there ready to capture that moment with no manipulation, camera used for its specific qualities.
Robert Capa 'The falling solider' 1936
'Bergen-Belsen concentration camp' Respect to dead bodies, maintains his distance with respect to the victims.
'Accidental Napalm' 1972 Could be read as anti war statement, when image becomes iconic it transforms it, we talk about the relation between the photographer and the subject
'People about to be shot' 1969 Picture and desire to gather it overides any human response to the work.
Documentary Exhausted 'To speak of....
Documentary constructed, attempt to re write american history, subjects were glossed over, a past we have not seen or perhaps not acknowledged