Documentary photography- a personal interpretation
Documentary Photography-A Personal interpretationDocumentary Photography takes on many styles and forms. In this Journal I am going to look at several different photographers and their style of work including:Jacob August Riis who was a police reporter for a New York newspaper and the father of socialistic documentary photography whose pictures of New York slums led to changes in US legislation.Dorthea Lange who is best known for her photography on the "Farm Security Administration" which documented American people after the Wall Street Crash and is respected for her series of images of the "migrant mother" taken in 1936.Henri Cartier-Bresson who is probably the most well known documentary photographer of the 20th Century and was one of the four photographers who started Magnum the world's most famous agency. Which despite the profile of Reuters is still held in high esteem and as a role model and influence to journalistic and documentary photographers of this millennium.Roberta Capa who was also a founder member of Magnum with his imaginative use of photo-journalism during the second world war which was used extensively for propaganda by the USA.
Picture 2In this photograph Cartier-Bresson has been more conventional in his style with this image to produce an arty shot using the wrought iron railings and the spiral steps in the foreground to give depth and a extra dimension that leads you into the picture the shutter has been realised at the precise moment so that the cyclist is in between the two horizontal lines of the railings. He realised that the written word alone was not enough on its own to show their miserable lifestyle and squalid living conditions and needed something more powerful to highlight this so turned to photography as his way to show this. Many people regard Henri Cartier-Bresson as a social documentary photographer. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children had killed. Picture 2:This image entitled Five Cents Lodging shows in grim form the horrific conditions these people lived in despite the children being to the right of the shot your eyes are drawn to them the use of flash highlights the grubby blanket that they use to keep warm while to the left of the shot you can see the dirty stove used for cooking their meals and a surprisingly large collection of cooking utensils the man at the back who is probably the young boys father is in shadow in the alcove of the small room. She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. In many ways documentary photography through the expressive genre of the photo essay and photo story plays an important role in story telling and history of life, class and society. When America entered the Second World War she worked for the US war relocation unit sadly most of her images were lost in transit. This style of picture is copied even to day by many Wedding photographers sadly they have to reproduce it by using motion blur in Photoshop because they don't have the gift or talent to create the image in camera as Cartier-Bresson always did. The series of images entitled "Migrant Mother" are a classic example of this. The most famous collection of his work must surely be " The Decisive Moment" published in 1952. In 1932 she began to photograph people in their social contexts and was taken on with Paul Taylor (who later became her husband) to work on the Farm Security Administration photographic unit (FSA). The use of flash was an important tool in many of his pictures as it meant that the camera could reveal all the more the detail of the sordid interiors of he was photographing, but more than that it also showed in tender detail the stark emotion and sadness on the faces of the people who's sad life it was to live in these terrible places.
Common topics in this essay:
Photography February,
Cents Lodging,
Documentary Photography,
Henri Cartier-Bresson,
Migrant Mother,
Robert Capa,
World War,
August Riis,
Africa Cartier-Bresson,
Mouffetard Paris,
documentary photography,
henri cartier-bresson,
picture 2,
decisive moment,
picture 1,
social documentary,
picture 3,
jacob august riis,
robert capa,
august riis,
20th century,
capturing fragments life,
effectiveness capturing fragments,
fragments life precisely,
derive effectiveness capturing,
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Acceptance Essays
