Exercise: Heuvel. Discussing Documentary.

Exercise: Heuvel. Discussing Documentary.

Heuvel opens with a comment about how surprising the discussion is surrounding the inclusion of documentary images in art settings.  He says that this is a result of ‘visual literacy’ and is a result of our viewing the word, not by personal experience, but through the lens by way of visual media.  Artists are just as likely to create a visual world through their pictures as they are to reflect the actual real world.  

The language required to read this new visual representation of the world has to be learned, and the best way of learning it is by viewing the images.  

Documentary images are only part of modern culture.

Heuvel limits his essay to documentary photography, starting with  militant eye-witness photography.  He discusses the main influences, the one from the West and one from the Communist East.  The West was human interest led while the East was country and party led.  The term Documentary Photography was coined by the film critic John Grierson in 1926 to denote non fiction films.

Documentary photography had its roots in socially aware photographers wishing to highlight the living conditions of the poor, especially in inner cities.  The FSA in the USA employed documentary photographers to record the effects of  the great depression by highlighting the conditions of farmers and their labourers. They were used as evidence for the New Deal in America,

The tradition continued into the post war years with the rise of popular illustrated magazines which were to be found in all Western countries.  

There grew up under the totalitarian control of the extreme right and extreme left the same tradition where pure art was seen as outmoded and the camera was employed to support the state.  The Communists used it to highlight the struggle of the worker in his fight for equality.  Hitler put a stop to any such images when he came to power.  

The documentary photographer of the ‘60s and ‘70s was typically a left wing activist armed with a 35mm camera loaded with black and white film.  The adding of an often biased commentary made for reportage which guided the viewer to read these images in a particular way.

During this period a gulf grew up between documentary photographers authentic portrayal of real life and photographers employed in advertising who put a gloss on life.  

The perception of documentary photography being independent was undermined by the arrival of mass television coverage and the availability of multiple channels.  The concept of visual literacy spread.

The loss of belief in the veracity of documentary photography opened up new uses for it in advertising and docudrama.  Images that were once considered only as documentary were finding themselves in the gallery and sold as art.  

This use of documentary images opened up new paths of criticism and acclaim.  This led to artists becoming involved with documentary photography bringing with them the techniques previously found only in art photography, such as colour and fine detail.  The pictures taken by these art led photographers were aimed, from the outset, at the glossy book and art circuit and were far less likely to tell a story.

The subjects covered by this new breed of photographers were wider than the poor and dispossessed and included all levels of society.  A level of objectivity was also lost with photographers becoming involved with their subjects.  

The shallowness of some of this work led to more traditional documentary photographers returning to their roots and producing work of true depth and honesty.  The mass coverage by general media outlets has let to a number of documentary photographers focussing on lesser subjects with more intensity.  

There is a belief that some stories are better told by the very people who experienced them rather than by outsiders.   The mixing of sources for presentations has become more accepted.  

Some photographers have investigated the way these images are displayed and show them in places not normally associated with photography, while others are presenting staged charades as documentary photographs.  

Yet another method is to re-enact a actual event, even using the original participants in those events.  One such installation involved three layers of time in the final presentation.  The original footage of a bank robbery, the subsequent cinema film of the event and the staged re-enactment of it.  

The way these new artists and photographers reflect on the way their images are displayed and analysed and their place in the media testifies to the level of visual literacy being brought to the understanding of the documentary image.