Newer avenues of documentary photography

Storytelling through pictures is an old idea that has existed for generations. What breathed new life into the concept of telling stories through pictures was documentary photography which integrated a crucial, social purpose. Documentary photography aimed to portray, in a manner more informal than was generally practiced, the everyday lives of ordinary people to other ordinary people.

This simple idea – capturing and presenting the “everyday life” of the “ordinary” became rapidly and widely popular in the early twentieth century. Its dominance has since waned over the years, but a modern notion of social documentary has been established, created by the proliferation of media products of the twentieth century.

In the 1920’s-1930’s, large-scale mass printing presses grew in popularity, which opened a domain for documentary to take off as a popular movement. The photographer became a crucial new media field-worker, and their work, a core element of filling the pages up of mass-printed magazines and newspapers.

Photo agencies emerged to represent the interests of these photographers. Western photographers were out there bringing photographs home, bearing the responsibility of documenting everyday life. They were acting as reporters, fulfilling a kind of responsibility, engaging in a kind of ‘humanistic act’. From them, came pictures and, occasionally, accompanying stories too.

The formal aim of social documentary was to keep records, but in the 1930s, it evolved to be a process to ‘enlighten’ and ‘educate’. Photographers were gathering pictures to develop a ‘picture story’ – a sequence of images that would visually narrate incidents with minimal support of text descriptions to contextualise it.

These photo stories were powerful and showed the world “in motion”, representing people and their range of emotions – smiling, crying, angry, or seemingly vulnerable in moments as common as any other in their daily lives.

As time went by, and processes saw more of the integration of technology, social truths became more embodied in “documenting”. Thus, emerged documentary photography, a tool within a broader movement of “social change” and “liberal attitudes”. Documentary photography had a mission – to inform the wider population, to encourage them to know, and in the involvement of this process, itself be informed of “the common people”.

Social documentary was decidedly focused on constructing the concept of the public realm through shared social experiences. In present times, the aim has diverged significantly from the traditional notion of photography as merely a “document”, or a form of proof.

A new understanding developed in this process: the idea that “the way of seeing is also a way of knowing”. That, “vision is knowledge”. In essence, the more one sees, the more one observes, and the more one is attuned to their senses, the more it equates to knowledge, and this knowledge improves humanity.

This concept of “seeing” as “knowing” was regarded as “True/Truth”, often associated with “factual evidence”. The notion of photographic evidence gained prominence with documentary photography, becoming a popular synonym for the very idea of truth. Thus, visual proof was paired with a strong pedagogical approach and judicial tone.

In 1935, Roy Stryker, an economist, government official, and himself a photographer, was appointed as the head of Historical Section in the Information Division of Resettlement Administration, later known as Farm Security Administration, during the great depression.

He launched the Photography programme to report on the organization’s activities and thought the medium was highly crucial for the administration’s activities. He obligated his hired photographers to inform and familiarise themselves of the situations they were reporting on from the field.

Photographer Theo Jung disagreed with this approach and wanted to rely on his instincts. Roy's deliberate approach and Jung's on-site decision-making approach to photography differed fundamentally. Subsequently, Jung was dismissed.

The Farm Security Administration programme focused on farming communities, small towns and the photographers felt that their work were highly significant, even if only to one man at their headquarter. People tend to get a sense of temporary comfort by living in denials. These denials can be fed with propagandas. However, propagandas are never successful in the long run and as propagandist, Stryker and his unit were never very successful.

Roy considered the “Migrant Mother” by Dorothea Lange as “the ultimate” picture and thus chose it for the cover of In This Proud Land. But Roy’s organisation prided itself on the “naturalness” of photography – moments that were organic, unfabricated, unmanipulated. So, it pained Roy Stryker that the Migrant Mother was posed.

Photographs that were contrary to the aspects that respected its “naturalness” would have been propaganda and, therefore, untrustworthy. So, when Arthur Rothstein moved a steer’s bleached skull in a drought-stricken South Dakota for the sake of a better picture, there were naturally some trouble.

There are different ways to portray, or narrate, “social stories”. How stories are made visible – the strategy employed behind its exposure – can be influence the ambition of documentary. Thus, documentary becomes not merely to preserve historical modes of “speaking” or expression, but to renovate and find new avenues of storytelling.

The domain of documentary photography lies in the space created at the intersection of art and journalism. It’s a result of a function that applies “creative treatment” to the idea of “actuality”. This means that ultimately, the “reality” of oneself is their “interpretation” of “real life” and what remains important is that there exists an interpretation, and that the interpretation has depth and insight, or, a measure of its “profundity”.

Essentially documentary photography does not possess an essence of “factual truth”, but rather, presents interpretations of human actions, and these interpretations are those of the observers. So-called “objective” and “descriptive” photography provides a more detached, disengaged and distanced position or perspective on the scenario pictured.

The need, the desire, and the yearning for the recognition of “reality” does not exist solely in the heart and mind of the photographer or those being photographed but also involves the spectator. Documentary images suggest that there is a particular perspective, outlook or a viewpoint by which a photograph must be looked at. But the “politics of vision” play a role in how an objective, documented photograph is viewed by a spectator when the spectator behold “knowledge”.

The viewer is forced to confront reality, but “confronting reality” is not something that the human species has historically been good at. Its extension and shadow projects across societies, manifested in the form of “denial”. A popular concept now, “denial” is seen referred to in magazines and applied by those who have never even heard of the term, or where it originates from in psychanalysis.

The same remains for teachers, students, and virtually anyone who has seemingly been “in denial” of the obvious truth or reality, readily evident or apparent to everyone around them. Thus, if a documentary intended to change, alter, or evolve the mindset of its audience does not fully succeed, or even completely fails to do so, it should not come as a surprise, even if the documentary engaged with its viewers with “interesting” photographic images.

The concept of documentary has to renovate itself as time goes on. It must adapt to different strategies, for new audiences, each of whom can have a different demand and hold different values. This is what has led documentary to find various voices and spaces, facilitated by the media, the spectacle culture of contemporary culture. A new openness emerges towards photography as contemporary art in institutions.

* Gazi Nafis Ahmed works with photography and video and has exhibited worldwide, including at the Venice Art Biennale. He taught at Danish School of Media & Journalism, Complutense University, Istitut Europeo di Design Madrid, Lens School of Visual Arts and was an honorary fellow at Columbia University.