The Photograph as Document

helen.clarke@leeds-art.ac.uk

The lecture will look at:

●a short history of Documentary photography●Images of the working class/poverty●Reporting and war●Photographing ‘other’ cultures●The concept of the decisive moment●The constructed document

William Edward Kilburn ‘The Great Chartist Meeting At The Common’ 1848

Grahame Clarke

●In many contexts the notion of a literal and objective record of ‘history ‘ is a limited illusion. It ignores the entire cultural and social background against which the image was taken, just as it renders the photographer neutral, passive and invisible recorder of the scene

“How The Other Half Live”

Jacob Riis, 1890

Jacob Riis ‘Bandit's Roost,59 1/2 Mulberry Street’ 1888

Jacob A. Riis A Growler Gang in Session (Robbing a Lush), 1887

Lewis Hine, Russian steel workers, Homestead, Pa., 1908

Duffer boy (1909)

F.S.A.(Farm Security Administration)

Margeret Bourke-White‘Sharecroppers Home’1937

Russel Lee‘Interior Of A Black Farmers House’1939

Dorothea Lange‘Migrant Mother’1936

Walker Evans

Floyd Burroughs (George Gudger), Hale County, Alabama,

1936.

Walker Evans ‘Graveyard, Houses & Steel Mill, Bethlehem, Pennysylvania’, 1935

Bill Brandt‘Northumberland Miner at His Evening Meal’1937

Robert Frank ‘Parade - Hoboken, New Jersey’ 1958

William Klein St Patrick's Day, Fifth Avenue 1954-55

William Klein Dance in Brooklyn 1955

Magnum group

●Founded in 1947 by Cartier-Bresson & Capa●Ethos of documenting the world & its social problems●Internationalism & Mobility

HENRI CARTIER-BRESSON

1908-2004

Henri Cartier Bresson: Magnum

The Decisive Moment

●“photography achieves its highest distinction – reflecting the universality of the human condition in a never-to-be-retrieved fraction of a second”●(Cartier-Bresson)

Henri Cartier BressonFRANCE. Paris. Place de l'Europe. Gare Saint Lazare. 1932.

Robert Capa ‘The Falling Soldier’ 1936

Robert Capa ‘Normandy, France’ 1945

George Rodger‘Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp’1945

Rodger Korango Nuba Tribesmen, Victor of a wrestling contest (1949)

Lee Miller Buchenwald 1945

Hung Cong Ut ‘Accidental Napalm Attack, 1972

Robert Haeberle‘People About to be Shot’1969

Don McCullin‘Shell Shocked Soldier’1968

documentary exhausted

●To speak of documentary photography at this point in it’s history) is to run headlong into a morass of contradiction , confusion and ambiguity, a position made more problematic by the way in which the increasing sophistication of visual technology makes it difficult to know what is ‘real’ and and what has been ‘faked’.

Documentary constructed: William Neidich (1989)

Edward Curtis Native North Americans (early20th century)

Bruno Barbey ‘Left Wing Riot Protesting The Building Of The New Narito Airport’, 1972

Jeremy Deller ‘The Battle Of Orgreave’ 2001

FFurther Research

●America in Pictures the story of LIFE magazine (2011)Rankin for BBC4●Clarke, Grahame (1997) The Photograph Chapter●Wells, Liz (2003) Photography: A Critical Introduction●The Battle of Orgreave Documentary (2001) Mike Figgis