Photo Documenting and Journalism (P)

Photo-documentation an Photo-journalism

Pictures that tell a story!

These are some photos of a walk in the woods I went on... putting the images together could tell a story and the person viewing it can deceiver it anyway they wish..........  

 

 How important is it to be able to tell a narrative or story from a photo!

A picture is worth a thousand words

getting from A to B 

This wasnt a true path but a set of difference images from different woodland walks at different times. However when put together a quick glance would let you think that it was a set up. Arrow-steps-seating. While this isn't a great example you get the idea hopefully.   

In journalism for instant I can see why the images of tragic news are there to inform us all of the emerging events that are taking place. Brutal and truth captured in an instant, a single second.

War being a good example

 

 Eddie Adams
Photo journalist

 Adams was a photographer who's work includes celebrities and politicians such as Mother Theresa and Ronan Reegan. However he is more known for his work in the Vietnamese war.

Adams work during the Vietnam War has since won prizes.

One photo is so iconic that it is the picture most people think of when they think of Vietnam: a Vietnamese general in Saigon executing a Viet Cong suspect. 

 

 This man just raised the pistol and Eddie made a picture of an interrogation, but the man pulled the trigger.... was one verison of event.

One of Adams' frames was the very instant the bullet entered the man's head — the moment of death.

War was said to haunt Adams afterwards, but this photo has been used since and demonstrations  truth of war.  Members of the anti-war movements used it to say how unjustified the war had been. For others it was just a very real scene.  Films of this execution were also taken but the photographic image itself was said to be more of an impact on people as you have time to consider all of what is happening.


There is always war, hunger, racism, poverty, pollution and corruption. Photographers are charged with making images that don’t look like the same photographs we have seen time and time again. Having to continually think about how to make compelling images, if you want stories to change things or at least make a viewer stop and think.

 Bill Brandt

Photographer working in around 1920's before the war  and was noted for his work in Social documentation.  Mixing with the likes of people like Man-Ray and Ezra Pound you can imagine that Brandt's photos could be a bit wild and surreal. Brandt however did more documentation than surreal. But he'd also use editing techniques like turning work Policeman in Dockland Alley to look like a night time scene while it was taken in daylight.

Policeman in Dockland Alley

The 'day for night' technique employed by cinematographers was to transform images photographed in daylight into night scenes.

He'd also use family members to act out scenes....... so how can we trust what we is as true life?

street scene of couple in Peckham was his brother and sister-in-law

his wife feature here in the red light district

Diana Arbus captured an image of a young boy holding a grenade in Central Park.

questioning belief

Another way of asking the question of real and truth.......what questions does this raise with you.....The viewer....



It can be disturbing seeing a young innocent boy with what looks like a grenade, the look of wildness in his eye and the way his hand is clasped uptight. Something disturbing maybe happening?

However Arbus had kept asking the boy to move around and while he was happy to go along with it at first, he then got annoyed and said to her....Just take the photo already!!! It was in this moment the image was captured....... Reading what you will.

So this gives the question what is the difference between photo-documentation and photo-journalism?

Keeping it as simple as possible I think that to document could be more a planned set up like the Brandt's London life photo's (while this was a personal commission) the journalism side would be a more spontaneous photo as in the War photo taken on the street in Siagon....

However, this isnt to say that although every picture can tell a story, the question is..what is the intended story?

Another way to make a different view on the world of this is the briefs or commissions......

A brief for someone could be used to document a wide number of things

Shelter commissioned artist Nick Hedges in 1968 to document the way families were living.......‘Make Life Worth Living’ shows many images of families living in filthy, cramped conditions - sometimes without electricity, heating or running water - as well as one family who were woken up in the early hours by demolition ball knocking down their tenement. 




50 years on and the images show how far we may have come with housing etc.  Documenting poverty but also social set ups.

This quote also is an example of our modern day living

“The insecurity, the ill health and the anxieties that young families, the poor and the elderly face is unfortunately as real now as it was then. It points to our failure as a society to address the basic needs of our fellow citizens.”

After 50 years and not that much may have changed....... More Housing, Less Land, Farming effect, More Trade, Less Work, Technology Advances, Less Social Scene............. Knock on effect that keeps going.......Environmental issues and climate change........

What documenting changes will be shown in the next 50 years and what changes will we have learnt from it....???

I'm now getting confused with it all to be honest and feel like I'm waffling on a bit haha...... So with that said I think I've summed it up best I can..