The art of documentary photography
Dear Reader,
Is documentary photography art? It is an old question that has to be asked repeatedly because the issue remains a topic.
On the one hand, a documentary is a form of photography that describes the reality with all its complexities and social problems. On the other hand, a contemporary photographer is acutely aware of his role in the visual culture, in which photography is embedded. Photography, even though apparently descriptive, is a highly coded form of communication. Aesthetics and the notion of subjectivity and personal commitment play an essential part in documentary photography. The truth in photography has been refuted already during the last century by fierce critics like Susan Sontag. Now photographers choose their own way to represent the issues of the present.
Cuban photographer, Ricardo Miguel Hernández, shows in his work When the memory turns to dust that national identity is a construction of collected memories. Hernández gathered randomly found postcards and damaged old pictures of the Cuban past and glued them together in a new, literarily constructed picture, creating an illustrative example of the role of photography in constructing the ‘real’.
That photographs can be constructions, even though they seem produced with a decisive, Cartier-Bresson like, moment, proofs the work The Corners of British photographer Chris Dorley-Brown. Many shots of East London corners were digitally blended into one stunning realistic and natural photograph. “The process was more like painting”, explains the London photographer.
Romanian photographer Roxana Savin did not construct her photographs but staged them, another way of giving documentary photography an artistic touch. “A photograph is just an illusion and should be treated as such,” Savin concludes about her work.
But documentary photography is also a very competent tool for detailed, realistic, but no less poetic pictures. Argentinian photographer Guillermo SrodekHart photographed the many old rural bars and shops in his country with his cumbersome wooden field camera.
Even more straightforward in his approach is the Russian photojournalist Valery Melnikov who documented the last Armenian inhabitants on the self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh. Melnikov made his personal and very emotive choices showing his empathy for the inhabitants of Paradise Lost.