Documentary Photography

Documentary Photography

Documentary photography usually refers to a popular form of photography used to story significant and historical events. It is typically covered in professional photojournalism, or real life reportage, but it may also be an amateur, artistic, or educational pursuit. The photographer attempts to produce truthful, objective, and usually straight photography of a particular subject, most often pictures of people.

Overtime people have developed ways to make an image last longer. Such as, Photogravure which is an intaglio printmaking or photo-mechanical process whereby a copper plate is coated with a light-sensitive gelatine tissue which had been exposed to a film positive, and then etched, resulting in a high quality intaglio print that can reproduce the detail and continuous tones of a photograph. Another method is halftone, halftone is a reprographic technique that simulates continuous tone imagery with dots, varying either in size, in shape or in spacing.

The refining of photogravure methods, and then the introduction of halftone reproduction around 1890 made low cost mass-reproduction in newspapers, magazines, and books possible. The figure most directly associated with the birth of this new form of documentary is the journalist and urban social reformer Jacob Riis. Riis was a New York police-beat reporter who had been converted to urban social reform ideas by his contact with medical and public-health officials, some of whom were amateur photographers. Riis used these acquaintances at first to gather photographs, but eventually took up the camera himself. His books, most notably How the Other Half Lives of 1890 and The Children of the Slums of 1892, used those photographs, but increasingly he also employed visual materials from a wide variety of sources, including police "mug shots" and photojournalistic images.

Riis's documentary photography was passionately devoted to changing the inhumane conditions under which the poor lived in the rapidly expanding urban-industrial centers. His work succeeded in embedding photography in urban reform movements, notably the Social Gospel and Progressive movements. These two techniques photogravure and halftone has helped amateur photographers put a message across.

People are now using smaller cameras to capture moments in time. The small camera that allows that is an I-phone, it enables people to take pictures with hardly anyone noticing, and an advantage especially in the street photography that people are interested in. Photographers are using the iPhone for their professional work and winning awards for their work. Damon Winter of the New York Times won an award for his work in Afghanistan.

How the other half lived JUNE 19 2013

Riis also took early advantage of flash photography to steer his camera into the city's darkest corners -- tenements, dark alleys, sweatshops, opium dens, beer halls -- and emerged with photographs that helped shift public opinion on NYC's poverty and slums.

The image is clearly staged and is looked closely the audience can see one of the small boys smiling, but it does get its message across.

Bandit's Roost (1888) by Jacob Riis, from How the Other Half Lives. This image is Bandit's Roost at 59½ Mulberry Street, considered the most crime-ridden, dangerous part of New York City. A long shot is used to see the poverty and poor living conditions.

Two men appear to guard the alley entry. Hanging on the railing of the right-hand staircase is a third man who has assumed a casual, yet commanding, pose. Perhaps he is the gang leader. There is a women leaning out the windows, the young child in the right background, the three figures on the opposite porch. The houses are very close to another, the viewer can see the harsh conditions the individuals are living in. there is long lines of laundry stretch between the buildings to emphasis the poverty. 

Riis walks the beat in New York City behind his friend and fellow reformer, NYC Police Commissioner, Theodore Roosevelt (1894—Illustration from Riis's autobiography).

Theodore Roosevelt introduced himself to Riis, offering to help his efforts somehow.

(sketch)

Goldberg is best known for his photographic books, multi-media exhibits and video installations, among them: Rich and Poor (1985), Nursing Home, Raised by Wolves (1995), Hospice, and Open See (2009). Goldberg photographs sub-cultures, creating photo collages, and including text with his photographs, often written by his subjects.

Goldberg is part of the social aims movement in photography, using a straightforward, cinéma vérité approach, based on a fundamentally narrative understanding of photography. Goldberg's empathy and the uniqueness of the subjects emerge in his works, "forming a context within which the viewer may integrate the unthinkable into the concept of self. Thus diffused, this terrifying other is restored as a universal." (Art Forum, Summer 1987).

An image from Jim Goldberg's Open See exhibition. includes this image of a Congolese refugee in 2008 French photographer wins £30,000 prize for UK photographer US photographer Jim Goldberg has won this year's Deutsche Borse photography prize for his exhibition Open See. Shown last year at the Photographers' Gallery in London, the exhibition documented the experiences of refugees and immigrants travelling from war-torn countries to make new lives in Europe. In the photograph the Congolese man is holding an old radio, his arms are across. The radio is held close to his chest to give of an impression this is one of the few possessions he owns. His wearing an apron with nothing underneath. He is melancholy; his head is down and his facial expressions are miserable. The camera is in focus of the Congolese man. An extreme midi shot is taken We can some sort of camp site behind with tents maybe due to the destruction of the homes.  Susan Sontag captured the essence of that faith in her monumental reverie.  On Photography when she wrote “Photographed images do not seem to be statements about the world so much as pieces of it."

"Raised by Wolves" Goldberg’s documents the lives of teenage runaways who live on the streets of San Francisco and Los Angeles. Recorded between 1987 and 1993, Jim Goldberg was on the California streets photographing and interviewing his adolescent subjects, their social workers and the police. They all lend a distinct dimension to the harrowing picture of American urban life, and the adversarial institutional culture surrounding it. A combination of photographs and video stills, found documents, and handwritten texts by the subjects themselves create a scrapbook of the stark and unsparing lives. At its heart, this book is a compassionate and moving study of adolescent life in America, of displaced and misunderstood youths. It reveals the myriad traps which are set by drugs, violence, and exploitation, and the ultimate longing for happiness. On the left hand side a long shot is used to capture the dangerous surroundings young people live in. The young boy seems to be taking a beer from a young girl. The fact that Goldberg captures this moment we see how these young people are made to grow  up fast and are expose to maladaptive behaviour. Even though the image seems to be staged the audience are aware of what is happening with  these young people. On the other side there is a image of image of two young people hugging .  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_photography