Is documentary
photography dead? by Eli Regan (essay written in 2006)
The bigger picture
does not exist. The nature of our existence in relation to the world around us
dictates our capacity only to understand and see situations around us in
fragments. The physical photograph allows us to revisit those fragments which
were particularly memorable as we trapped them. The photograph is an isolated
incident (however many situations/interactions are being shown within one
photograph) free of context which represents our gravitas to subjectivity.
However, to contradict the last statement or at least undermine it, it should
be said that these rectangles and squares become in being trapped, liberated by
constrictions of time and space and in their silence are able to provide the
starting point for endless interpretations and possibilities.
This essay aims to
begin to question and not necessarily resolve whether documentary photography
is alive or dead in the 21st century.
It aims to create a thoughtful debate by discussing a few aspects in relation
to documentary photography: 1) Documentary photography and truth, 2)
Postmodernism and its effect on the documentary genre, 3) Recent critics’ views
on documentary practice within photography and 4) A brief discussion of a
photograph by 20th century
and 21st century
documentary practitioner, Donovan Wylie.
1.Documentary
photography and truth
I remember an image
of a woman in Sudan crying out in the heat, maybe mourning the dead or the
living in the front of The Guardian, deeply affecting me. I remember seeing the
same image printed in the front page of The Independent months later referring
to Sudan . It’s strange how I could not muster the same depth of feeling as I
had on my first encounter of the image. It is not that the situation was any
less torturous for the Sudanese, but I felt betrayed by the lack of current
pictures. The chances are that my first encounter with the image of the
Sudanese woman crying, was an archive ready-made commodity. The association of
documentary photography with truth is a contentious one, and one much criticised
by many documentary photographers themselves. In David Levi Strauss’ book of
essays, “Between the Eyes-Essays on Photography and Politics”, he refers to
Richard Cross, a photojournalist who covered the conflicts in El Salvador and
Nicaragua between 1979 and 1983, as stating:
“In photographs,
the priority seems to be on getting good shots, so to speak, shots of the news
moment. And it’s a sort of unwillingness to come to terms with what is going on
down there in a systematic way... I would opt much more for telling the story
with lots of images and text that tries to relate what has been going on in El
Salvador with what has been going on in the last 50 years in the world- things
like the decline of neo-colonialism and the rise of independent nation-states.”
Documentary
photographs can be used just as powerfully as text as political propaganda.
With the aid of captions, cropping and editing these images are interpreted in
endless permutations by the viewer, and in turn the media and or government
have achieved their aim of misrepresenting the work of even the most socially
conscious of photographers.
This fractured,
deconstructed, overanalysed world offers us the chance to mistrust absolutely
every picture we come across. There appears to be no medium between the media
employing either immediate grainy mobile phone footage or hopelessly outdated
images obtained from internet stock photography companies such as Corbis or
Getty Images. The result of this is two fold: a public who is understandably,
increasingly distrustful of the “truth” in images (be they outdated, edited,
digitally manipulated, etc) and the lack of opportunities for idealistic
photographers who still believe in capturing the essence of truth of a
situation in various images (whether it be war, homelessness, local news, etc).
The Guardian photographer, Don McPhee, spoke about the lack of opportunities
for young documentary and photojournalistic practitioners in a talk about his
exhibition at Manchester City Art Gallery in 2005. It is not that these
documentary opportunities have completely disappeared, but in an era that
demands information faster than any other generation before, quality and truth
are often disregarded in favour of cost-effective immediacy. In this
climate of crisis, our hunger for photographs grows, as our cynicism also
increases. Historical amnesia can have terrible consequences, and our
incapacity to understand the present is causing short term memory loss even in
the most discerning of people. The Orwellian nightmare is upon us and yet
technology, for its all retrograde authoritarian, surveying, all-knowing power,
can also be a tool for subversion, so frequently an aim of documentary
photography.
2. Postmodernism
and its effect on the documentary genre
There is a notion in
postmodernism that refers to the concept of ‘partial histories’. To begin to
understand this confusing social theory that so many discuss but not many
comprehend, the concept of ‘partial histories’ is useful to grasp.
“Postmodern
historians and philosophers question the representation of history and cultural
identities: history as “what ‘really’ happened” (external to representation or
mediation) vs. history as a “narrative of what happened”, a “mediated
representation” with cultural/ideological interests… [As Walter Benjamin stated
in “Theses on the Philosophy of History]: “every image of the past that is not
recognised by the present as one of its own concerns threatens to disappear
irretrievably.””
Once we begin to
understand the idea of ‘partial histories’ as one of the hallmarks of
postmodernism we see how much of an impact this has had on the documentary
genre. Artists such as Willie Doherty from Ireland , are a clear exponent of
this theory. His work, mostly filmic and photographic aims at understanding
history through the blurring of reality and fiction, or his own political
interpretation of Ireland ’s history. Doherty, in an interview with Tim Maul,
says about his own work:
“ ‘The Only Good
One’ drew on those cinematic clichés of the assassin and victim but attempted
to not create a character but to try and assimilate or look at the mutual
dependency of both of these positions.”
His work, therefore
constitutes (as with Paul Graham) a blurring of the lines between documentary,
propaganda and art, another recurring theme of the postmodern, the
hybridization of cinema, photography, propaganda and surveillance into highly
textured, complex pieces.
Doherty also
explains:
“ I had a different kind of knowledge
of the place [ Derry ] than most photographers, I wanted to try and use that
insider information and try to work around the existing images… I didn’t want
to be a Journalist and I didn’t want to try and make work for newspapers or
magazines and I felt that if I could find a position within the art world it
might be a more interesting place to have some kind of debate or discussion,
and to allow the work to be part of it.”
This bastardization
of various genres in order to get to the root of the various problems but not
necessarily find any answers is the great impasse of postmodernism. It is also
its beauty, in that for all its pluralistic values, and cynicism about
absolutes, it questions, subverts and challenges the status quo, and in turn
can overthrow seemingly steadfast truths with rabid interrogations.
3. Critics’ recent
views on documentary photography
It is not only the
artists and photographers that are questioning the established order; critics
do through their appraisals of documentary practice.
Echoing what Willie
Doherty believes, Brigitte Lardinois and Val Williams state:
“the view of
Ireland in photographs has always been a partial and biased one.”
While this is true of
most history, Ireland is the perfect example of complex issues of politics,
religion, tradition and conflict that do not seem to be understood widely and
are dismissed frequently. They go on to say:
“When attempting
to place the work of Magnum photographers within a history of photography made
in Ireland , one soon becomes aware of how fragmentary and unwritten both of
these histories are.”
The word
‘fragmentary’ is perhaps one of the most useful, in order to understand the
basis of postmodern thought. Everything is broken down, Tarantino style with
little hope of a Hollywood straightforward narrative. Lardinois and Williams
proclaim:
“We change and
modify our concept of visual history. For many Magnum photojournalists, the
editing process which their pictures underwent could also be a re-writing of
history. Ian Berry remembers well how selective editing of his work during the
1970’s could entirely change its political significance.”
This view brings us
into line to the earlier view that Richard Cross had of editing. So much depends
on our power to interpret or see beyond what is in front of us. People
misconstrue postmodernism with the notion of rejecting history and modernism.
In fact, it often desires to understand history much more objectively, however
fragmentary, it recognises, its attempts are.
Alicia Miller in her
essay ‘Return to the Real’, in source view is:
“Experimentation
in every artistic medium is what drives expression forward and there is a need
to acknowledge the alternate forms of photographic expression that many artists
are working with. It’s time to recognise this romance with the real for what it
is- a nostalgic reminiscence with something we thought we knew.”
I fundamentally
disagree with the above statement. While I agree for the need for photography
to go forward, I believe as stated earlier that the truth of a situation can
still be represented by the hybridisation of photography with other art forms.
Photographs or series of photographs can also stand on their own, real, or
almost hyper-real as displayed in the recent work of Julian Germain and Donovan
Wylie.
Perhaps it is useful
now to discuss various photographs from Donovan Wylie’s recent portfolio: Maze.
4. Donovan Wylie’s
‘Maze’
Donovan Wylie. The Maze Prison. Prison cell. H-Block-5, B
Wing 3/25, 2003.
The caption to the
photograph confirms the cell-like, incarcerating nature of the photograph. Yet
that light. That screaming light. Under the relentless scrutiny of that light,
I can sense the loneliness of the many who slept there, almost realise the
desire for constant dark, so as to not experience the metaphor come true of
light showing the grime of the crime they may or may not have committed. The
tree shaped air freshener hung from the curtains echoing the curtains
themselves with tree-like motifs makes me stop and look at this particular
photograph, examine it slightly more than the others in the series. Maybe this
person did prefer the light, maybe he preferred light, cleanliness, air
freshener. Maybe his mother had been the most house proud in her street,
instilled in him a sense of the ordered.
Speculation is part
of the attraction of postmodernism. Wylie, born in 1971, falls into the
category of Generation X, a generation without marked out beliefs trying to
carve their own reality. I would say he is most definitely a documentary
photographer, but I would also say he practices documentary photography in a
different fashion to previous documentary practitioners.
Documentary
photography, therefore is not dead. It has evolved, but in this evolution,
something has been lost. Some argue, like Miller, that it was never there, we
just thought ‘we knew’. I think, previous photographers, tried, in the best way
they could, such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, to understand the essence of a situation
and portray it as honestly as they could. This inevitably tended to be from the
angle of a leftist political point of view, and therefore, biased, yet who
could fail to admire their idealism and noble aims? Perhaps, many, but not me.
We possess in our hands invaluable historical and social documents that teach
us about wars and the working class man and family, more truthfully, I believe,
than any other generation could have hoped for. History, as they say in
postmodern circles, is always told from the victor’s point of view. Franco and
Henri Cartier-Bresson. I know who I would rather learn my history from.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Books
1.
Lardinois,
B and Williams, V. 2005. Magnum Ireland London
2.
Strauss,
D.L. Between The Eyes: Essays on
Photography and Politics. 2003. New
York
Journals
1. Miller, A. Winter 2004 (Issue 41). Return to the Real. Source: The
Photographic Review.
Websites
1.
Irvine , M at Georgetown
University
2.
Haul,
T interviews Willie Doherty. Available from http://www.jca-online.com/doherty.html [accessed 25/10/2005]
ADDITIONAL READING
1. Barthes, R. 2000. Camera Lucida. Vintage.
2. Bryson, T (ed). 2005. Making History- Art & Documentary in Britain
3. Cartier-Brésson, H. 1999. The mind’s eye: Writings on Photography and Photographers.
New York
4. Godfrey, T. 1998. Conceptual Art. London
5. Howarth, S. 2006. Singular Images: Essays on Remarkable Photographs. Aperture
foundation.
6. Sontag, S. 1977. On Photography. Penguin Books.
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