Bernd and Hilla Becker were a pair of photographers who coined the term: Typology. Typology means the study of types, in photography this means a collection of the same subject photographed and arranged together in a grid, inspired in part by 3 German photographers.

Karl Blossfeldt

Karl Blossfeldt produced a body of work where he showcased standardised photographs of different plant-life. Each image showed a highly detailed copy of a plant arranged in the same way for a uniform look. The images were arranged together in the book which was originally used for modelling by art students. The inspiration that Bernd and Hilla Becker took from his work was his study of type, standardisation and arrangements which they later changed into grids. Karl Blossfeldt thought that photographers should utilise the cameras realism to scientifically showcase the real world which I would have also inspired the dead-pan approach used in typologies.

Albert Renger-Patzsch

Albert Renger-Patzsch studied the natural form and industrial subjects shown like a scientific illustration. Similarly, like Karl Blossfeldt, he believed that photography’s strengths were in its ability to capture real life texture. Bernd and Hilla Becker took inspiration from the subject matter of Albert Renger-Patzsch being industrial texture and the approach of realism.

August Sander

August Sander was a German documentary photographer who aimed to photograph every person in his town for his project People of the Twentieth Century. “If we can create portraits of subjects that are true, we thereby in effect create a mirror of the times.” is a famous Quote from August Sander which represents his approach to this task: portraying the town justly and truthfully. He didn’t just photograph the elite or those who could afford to be photographed as this would be a biased ‘miss telling’ of the townsfolk, he photographed everyone from children to bakers and those who would otherwise be forgotten. He arranged his photographs into the volumes: The Farmer, The Skilled Tradesman, The Woman, Classes and Professions, The Artists, The City, and The Last People. His work was to act as a truthful time capsule of the real people in his town. The inspiration that Bernd and Hilla Becker took from his work was honestly capturing every ‘type’ and preserving it.

Bernd and Hilla Becker

Bernd and Hilla Becker’s Typologies were in black and white showing industrial structures before they were taken down as a way of preserving the uniqueness of each structure. They were large grids of structures that looked different but served the same purpose. Each photograph was taken outside in natural lighting. The sky makes up most of the background and would have been taken in cloud or grey skies. The use of natural light show the structures honestly as they would have been seen which was important for the point of preserving the structures in photographic form. The contrast is quite low without any dark blacks or bright whites. Every image was taken at the same angle with the same framing to standardise each image which makes them fit together in a grid. Each one is centred and close cut in the frame to minimise wasted space which is important when arranged them in the grid as space is added between each image. This also makes the focus extremely clear which is equally important when quickly glancing at the overall grid.

Each photographers influence is clear in these images. The photographs show an industrial structure like Albert Renger-Patzsch, arranged in a grid like Karl Blossfeldt and preserve unique subjects like August Sander all the while standardising and grouping by types.

For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness – Julian Germain

This book is composed of eight years of photos, and archived a series of images of a old man living life, reflecting on the past years. Based in a small coastal town.

Why?

First meeting Charles Snelling because he was selling flowers. Julian Germain knocked on Snelling’s door, having seen his sign in the window selling flowers. The house and car were also intriguing for Germain, brightly coloured and eye-catching. Having met Snelling through simply knocking on his door it was the start of a 8 year long friendship, documenting Snelling’s life both past and present. Germain wanted to capture Snelling, an interesting man in his own light, unfiltered, real. The book is a note on friendship, the photos taken have an informal feel, the type friends would take and share. Carefully curated to show the real Snelling, unfiltered, from his memories to passions taken from a viewpoint of friendship rather than a photographer. The portraits cover a series of things, from Snelling’s gentle life style, unapparent to the modern world, surrounded by colour, flowers and beloved memories of his wife. The work is aimed to be evocative, captured the joy Snelling had for life and the freedom he felt exploring in his later years in life. A large part of the book is based on the loss of Snelling’s wife, Betty, her presence is throughout, whether it is snapshots of old photos of the pair or the brightly coloured flowers they both loved dearly. Germain focused on accurately documenting Snellings life, filled with music, memories and passion, showing the world an example of how to live life. ‘We cannot personally invent life; we have to follow someone’s example.’ Germain found Snelling helped him in may ways, a clear mind to learn from in a commercial world. There doesn’t need to be winners and losers as the modern world suggests but a life filled with colour, memories and freedom.

Julian Germain

Julian Germain is a photographer, a story teller. Based in Northumberland but his work has been featured all around the world, including Sao Paulo, MASP, London and the Photographers’ Gallery. Germain’s most well known work is this book and his ‘Classroom Portraits’. ‘For every minute…’ is a book based around Charles Snelling and details of his life from highly emotional moments like reflecting on his late wife to the joy his brightly coloured, Robin Reliant brings him. Germain’s ‘Classroom Portraits’ is a still Germain’s signature style, intimate reflections and experiences on peoples lives, hoping to share how to escape the commercial lifestyle we are all encouraged to live in the modern world. Often Germain works with found photographs, allowing for the viewer to have a further understanding of what and why Germain is photographing the subject, what their life and experiences has brought to Germain’s.

How Germain took the photos

Each image is made up of elements, nothing is done without reason. Germain takes a friendly approach, but his skills remain professional, balancing images well, knowing when he can allow for small flaws like off kilter angles or soft focuses to add to the reality of documenting someone’s life, life isn’t perfect so the photos need to reflect this. Unusually Germain, not only includes Snelling’s own photos in scrapbooks, but holds them to the same weight as his own, providing a rich insight into Snelling’s life in a way he couldn’t do as not Snelling himself. Germain’s work is complimented with Snellings photos and Snelling photos are referenced within the work. Germain ensured he included many photos of Snelling himself, either composed portraits or snapshots of a memory. Some of the portraits, are composed in a way similar to fine art, centred, simple subject focus with a snippet of a passion, or often linking to a scrapbooked photo of Snelling or one he took. Technically, Germain is a very talented photographer, focused on his best outcomes, what is the most beneficial to the narrative. Many of the photos in the book are taken with a shallow depth of field, a ‘fine art’ style. Germain used colour, a huge part of Snellings life to show that it is a huge part of Snelling’s life. Within the work it is clear the love Betty and Charles’s put into their photos is reciprocated through the passion Germain has for his work. Carefully composing his portraits to include small details like flowers, colours, and lighting developing the narrative of Snelling.

One of the pages is a scene of Betty holding a plant taken by Charles’s Kodak Instamatic. Then on the right, is a photo of Charles holding the same camera, a soft focus on himself and the camera being in focus. This is a key example of Germain’s technical style, re-living the moments found in found photos. Furthering the emotional effect of the photos. Within the book there are elements of ‘snapshots’ where Germain has replicated the style of Betty and Charles’s own photos.

The Book Itself

The title consists of the majority of the text, the book otherwise only containing a brief afternote from Germain. However, over the years Germain has shared further details on the time he spent with Snelling, the photos themselves and small stories and memories he created with Snelling. There is no apparent need for text in the book, the photos themselves are compelling enough, covering small interactions, revisited memories, everyday life.

It was published by MACK, in 2005, five years after Snelling had died. Containing 80 pages 23.5cm X 28cm in size, specifically a reference to matching one of Snellings original photo albums. Adding another small touch of Snelling to the book. The cover is a hardback with a cloth cover, one printed with flowers similar to the wallpaper featured in some photos. Having a 1970’s design bodes well for the contents of the book, full of colour and passion. When first opening the book the first pages are of Snelling’s photo albums, a strong impression for a sentimental, emotional story to come, these scrapbook inserts act as milestones within the book, structuring the narrative for the viewer and providing a personal insight into the story not just from Germain’s point of view.

Trevor Henderson

Born in 1986, Canadian Artist Trevor Henderson is a surrealist digital artist known for his horror-themed artwork often featuring creatures. He had gained popularity online for creating eerie, cryptid-like monsters in a vintage-style filter.

He had been interested in the horror genre from a young age, his father was the first to introduce him to then genre and his parents have been supportive of his work ever since. His most well known piece of work is a cryptid called ‘Siren Head’ which he created in 2018, a game developer had made a game for ‘Siren Head’ in 2018. Henderson started to become well known and famous in 2020 due to famous YouTubers such as Markiplier and Jacksepticeye who had played the game and introduced his work to their communities.

His work also raised to fame due to the ‘Cursed Images’ culture. people would often use Henderson’s images and combine them into a compilation of cursed images along with creepy or cheerful/unfitting music in the background. These compilations would get millions of views on YouTube which further pushed Henderson’s work out.

Henderson creates his art by “I draw on top of photos using a couple specific photoshop brushes, and then play around with filters like noise and gaussian blur to try and mesh the two together!”. He has created hundreds of creatures, some of his most popular creations are called Cartoon Cat, Bridge Worm, Long Horse, Anxious Dog and many more. His creatures come in three different groups, Creatures (the normal ones), the Giants/Titans and the Giants/Misty Titans (that only appear in foggy or cloudy days).

Anthi Kollia

“Photography was the first form of art that made me feel uniquely different in my early years of all the forms I tried and experimented with.”

Greek photographer Anthi Kollia began her photography journey in 2017 and is currently studying photography at the University of West Attica to further develop her skills, her early work explored the themes of beauty, emotion and human expression. Her work often reflects deep emotional states such as madness, despair, and vulnerability.

Her work often conveys a surreal and dreamlike atmosphere, she blends reality with the subconscious to explore the intersection of dreams and emotions. Kollia seeks to capture the inner world of her subjects by turning their emotional states into visual narratives.

One of her projects called “Ophelia” was inspired by Shakespeare and his theme of tragic heroine, it specifically focuses on the themes of madness and sorrow.

Evaluation

I’ve decided to use these three photographers as reference to my own project because of their unique styles, compositions and how their images look overall.

Firstly, I decided to look at Trevor Henderson’s work, I really like his nightmarish style featuring creatures that give a spine-chilling sensation and how he fuses reality with these creatures to convey the feeling/image of a nightmare. I chose him as my first photographer to reference because he inspired me with new ideas of how I will present the “Dream/Nightmare” aspect of my images.

I then chose Anthi Kollia as my second photographer because of her dream-like ethereal images. I really like how she has used a veil/cloth because it adds more of an ethereal aesthetic to her work. I want to reference her because she portrays the beautiful and dramatic side of reality/dreams which is something I want to include in my own images. In other words I chose her due to the aesthetic of her work.

Websites/Links used:

• https://trevorhendersonfanon.fandom.com/wiki/Trevor_Henderson
• https://trevorhenderson.fandom.com/wiki/Trevor_Henderson
• https://www.lensculture.com/projects/1854622-ophelia
• https://www.moments-collective.com/post/anthi-kollia-the-photographer-who-weaves-dreams-moments-collective

Andrew Scott

For my first artist reference, I went for Andrew Scott. He was firstly born in 1991 and was best known for as an artist that makes his art look realistic, because he uses effects such as breaking the glass on the frame to match the drawing/adds actual objects like a popped balloon for an art piece he did which was a little girl looking sad holding the string to the balloon.

In these images, you can see how the art piece he creates, interacts with the frames like the first one with the young boy climbing up the frame, (as stairs), which Scott has created by cutting and changing the physical shape of the frame.

In the middle image, you can see the young boy leaping over nothing, (before the frame is put on). But, after Scott has broken the frame in the middle underneath the boy jumping, it creates a realistic feel to the viewer as now the boy is jumping/leaping over the actual frame.

In the third image, he created this young boy shooting a slingshot just to his right, but in reality there isn’t any damage until Scott changes his frame/glass over the image to help add effect and emotion to the original image, such as using a nail and hammer and creating a smashed hole in the glass frame, to create a view of the young boy in the frame shot his slingshot at the frame and it smashed it. They are all very interictal with the viewers as they create a funny/realistic approach.

Through Andrew Scott’s art work, he experiments a lot whether it’s through breaking, shattering, burning, or reconfiguring frames, but Andrew brings the subjects in his artwork to life. By breaking the fourth wall and making the frame part of the artwork itself, Andrew continually bends artistic convention in new and surprising ways.

Banksy

For my second artist reference I chose Banksy, the reason I chose Banksy as my second artist reference is because as I spoke about Union Jack/Flag in my mood board/mind map above, Banksy uses a lot of the Union Jack/Flag in his art work to express different meanings whether it’s anger, sadness, sorry-for or strength, such as these art pieces he made:

In this art piece Banksy created, it shows the Union Jack as the background, but all torn up, with a man about to throw flowers across the image. The reason for the Union Jack all torn up, could relate to the man who seems upset and angry about to throw away brand new flowers he could’ve just gotten for a loved one or friend. This image is very powerful as it shows anger throughout the whole image from the mans facial expression and body position and also the torn up flag. This has inspired me to create photographs similar with multiple meanings behind it.

This image on the other hand, resembles sadness and loneliness, how the young small boy, is on his knees sowing the union flags, that we put up. He did the similar idea from Andrew Scott with the art piece intertwining with the audience as their is normal in-colour flags starting to get hung up next to the boy as if he was creating them for everyone to see around Britain. I really like this image as well because it creates an emotional connection to the viewer, allowing multiple thoughts throughout and with the black and white artwork with the physical flags in colour also creates a disperse for the audience.

Martin Parr

My image inspired by Martin Parr is documentary like his. It includes the weather (cloudy), a symbol of hope that it might get sunnier and Brits go to the beach regardless of the weather and still want ice cream. I didn’t have a queue of people in my photo, but I have a green wheelie bin instead next to the ice cream van. The Wheelie bin is an Iconic British object. And hints to the fact that British people like to do what is expected – like queuing patiently, they will put their rubbish in the bin where it belongs. Even ice cream comes with a sense of responsibility.

Ideas from Martin Parr – Sense of humor, British stick etiquette, links to my photo, humorous, sense of hope, polite nation, fair. Queuing = Deeply British = Everyday action loaded with cultural meaning.

Man Ray

He was born in 1890, his photography was based on Dada and Surrealism, he was influenced by Paul Cezanne, Auguste Rodin, Henri Matisse, Dada and Surrealism.

The Surrealist community was slowed in the wake of the political turmoil following the Second World War, however, the surrealist movement fully unraveled in 1966 when Breton died. The photography world had all but exploded when surrealism was fading, with the rise of commercial and fashion markets and an increased respect for fine art photography. Yet the avant-garde nature of surrealist photography remained timeless, allowing photographers like Man Ray to publish books, work as a fashion photographer for the likes of Vogue, and be continually exhibited beyond his death in 1976. 

Observatory Time: The Lovers.

Title: A l’Heure de l’observatoire: Les amoureux.
Date: 1936
Style: Dada, Surrealism.

Article: ‘One of Man Ray’s most memorable paintings, Observatory Time, is featured in this black-and-white photograph, along with a nude. It includes a depiction of the lips of his departed lover, Lee Miller, floating in the sky above the Paris Observatory. In the photograph, the nude is lying on her side on a sofa underneath the painting, with a chessboard at her feet. Observatory Time hints at what the woman might be dreaming: a nightmare or an erotic fantasy. The lips in the picture were an inspiration for the logo of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and many other pop culture iconic images. The chessboard appears in many of the artist’s works – Duchamp, Picabia and Man Ray all loved playing chess. And Man Ray considered a grid of squares, “the basis for all art… it helps you to understand the structure, to master a sense of order.” He also made chess set designs and photographs of chessboards, pieces and players.’

The main idea you have when you think of union, is people and a community of people, I though that, that could be good idea, however it would be quite common. I want to Incorporate emotions and people together, and show how each person can have an emotional impact on others. I like the idea that everyone has different things going on in their lives and how each person reacts to things differently, it helps to make people more unique. People change emotions every second of the day and it would be quite cool to capture a few of those emotions, whether if that’s by taking candid photos or staged photos of a model in the studio. By showing emotions I don’t necessarily have to capture it on someone’s face but it can be by the way a person acts, their hobbies or even just by putting a certain colour over a photo. Most colours have an associated emotion, for example people would tend to see red as anger or love, purple as boredom and blue as sadness.

Union of people:

Sonder- (psychology) sonder: the profound feeling of realizing that everyone, including strangers passing in the street, has a life as complex as one’s own, which they are constantly living despite one’s personal lack of awareness of it.

• A picture of someone up close, portrait, turn it into a black and white effect using the threshold filter.

• Someone up close and a smaller edited person next to them or on their head.

• Pictures of peoples windows with silhouettes

For final project, the theme union was given, to me union is a community of people together, it could be focused on their emotions or the clothes they wear, the food they eat and so on. When I heard the theme union, I immediately thought of the word sonder, sonder is known as the profound feeling of realisation that everyone around you, even the strangers walking past you has a life just as complicated and difficult as yours that they are constantly living despite one’s personal lack of awareness of it. The way I see it is a union of people and emotions, each person carries different emotions and each person decides to hide it in a specific way, some more than others, and it is important not to judge people for the way they show emotions. For this project I want to be able to capture peoples true emotions and there life, their real life, that isn’t staged. This could consist of just walking around the island and talking candid pictures of strangers to capture the true moment, but I’ve don’t that previously for my other projects, so I wanted to switch it up, one thing I haven’t used much is a portrait, portraits are a good way of finding a persons emotions and this will help me develop my skills on the different types of portraits there are and how to accomplish them. One of the firs photoshoots that I have in mind is taking pictures of peoples windows, not necessarily going round and taking pictures of people in general but to capture the truth behind each window, everyone will have a window and behind it lays a different life, a different set of emotions that the person that’s living there may feel. there may be different lighting and different style of furniture in the window and this will allow me to spot the different and realise how different everyone is, this is due to cultural and ethnical backgrounds, the way you were brought up and how it has shaped you as a person.

When looking at the theme of union, we had to decide what type of union we would pick and along that we had to pick an art movement, I decided to have a look at Surrealism and Dadaism. I really believe that those art movement can help me create some good set of photos. I really like the idea of surrealism as it provides a dream like feeling, something that isn’t real, its fake and unrealistic. This can be compared to how society is shaped now, there are some unrealistic rules that people need to follow and it can effect each person in a different way. Dadaism is slightly more difficult to link to union, though Dadaism was seen to record the news and protest for things, its almost like a poster full of painting/pictures to inform the world about something. I could take pictures to inform people about the meaning of sonder and how it can shape a persons mind set. I will be looking at different artists that inspire me, for example I will be looking at Angus Mcbean who is a surrealist artist. I also will look at Hannah Höch who is a Dadaist artists and finally I would like to try and recreate some of Andy Warhol’s work.

overall, my main goal is to capture some photos to try and get a perspective on how everyone’s life is different and how each person can make an influence in the world. The word union, makes me think of a community or a group of people, some could say that the world is a union and we all come together to form a society. Each person has a purpose and each person has a goal. A lot of people could suggest that the world is quite selfish and we don’t realise that the people around us have a strong impact on us. I want to be able to capture photos that really show peoples expressions and how a persons mood can change over time, I also want to show that there is a group of people, whether is the same person edited or multiple different people, just to show how the world is and how everyone in this world has a purpose.

Different …ISMS I’ve looked at from the early 20th century:

CUBISM, FAUVISM, DADAISM, DE STIJL, RUSSIAN CONSTRUCTIVISM, SUPREMATISM, FUTURISM, SURREALISM, EXPRESSIONISM.

I will be analysing cubism, futurism and surrealism, looking at the manifesto, and how they are united together.

cubism

Art Examples (mostly Pablo Picasso):

Photography examples ( DAVID HOCKNEY):

About Cubism:

Cubism was a revolutionary new approach to representing reality invented in around 1907–08 by artists Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. It transformed everyday objects, landscapes, and people into geometric shapes.

The Cubist style emphasized the flat, two-dimensional surface of the picture plane, rejecting the traditional techniques of perspective, foreshortening, modeling, and chiaroscuro and refuting time-honored theories that art should imitate nature.

By using cubes instead of curved lines, the artist is able to distort the image, creating an illusions and changing the perspective. Cubists believed they could give the viewer a more accurate understanding of an object, landscape or person by showing it from different angles or viewpoints, so they used flat geometric shapes to represent the different sides and angles of the objects. By doing this, they could suggest three-dimensional qualities and structure without using techniques such as perspective and shading.

surrealism:

About Surrealism:

The poet Guilliame Apollinaire first coined the term “Surreal” in reference to the idea of an independent reality, existing “beneath” our conscious reality.

Surrealism started with the artist Andre Breton back in the 1920s. He was interesting in the dreams and the unconscious mind, balancing this with the rational vision of life. Many surrealist artists have used automatic drawing (creating art without conscious thought) or writing to unlock ideas and images from their unconscious minds. Others have wanted to depict dream worlds or hidden psychological tensions.

In many instances, these artists have turned to political activism. In this way, the revolutionary concepts encouraged by Surrealism has led the movement to be seen as a way of life.

Beginnings of Surrealism

Surrealism grew out of the Dada movement (formed during the First World War in Zurich in negative reaction to the horrors and folly of the war), which was also in rebellion against middle-class complacency. Artistic influences, however, came from many different sources. The most immediate influence for several of the Surrealists was Giorgio de Chirico, their contemporary who, like them, used bizarre imagery with unsettling juxtapositions (and his Metaphysical Painting movement). They were also drawn to artists from the recent past who were interested in primitivism, the naïve, or fantastical imagery, even artists from as far back as the Renaissance.https://www.theartstory.org/movement/surrealism/.

How to take Surrealism photographs

below are some Ideas I have to create surrealist photography:

• Photomontage
• Choice of Color
• Floating the Subject
• creating interesting perspectives
• using reflection
• multiple exposures
• distortion

By using unconventional techniques, like the ones above, surrealist photographers turned a previously mechanical tool into a medium via which they could express the avant-garde framework of the surrealist movement.

Futurism:

About Futurism:

‘we will free Italy from her innumerable museums which cover her like countless cemeteries’

Above is a quote by by the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in 1909. He started the movement and among modernist movements futurism was exceptionally vehement in its denunciation of the past. This was because in Italy the weight of past culture was felt as particularly oppressive.

Futurist painting used elements of neo-impressionism and cubism to create compositions that expressed the idea of the dynamism, the energy and movement, of modern life. (tate)

How I will use these movements:

By doing research into these movements, I have been able to find more inspiration for the topic of union. For example, I can use surrealism to talk about the union between the conscious and unconscious mind through photography, as well as analyse artists like Man Ray to further add to my studies. I can also look at the union between past, present and future with the Futurism art movement, researching further into Italian history potentially using my Italian relatives to help me.

Photo 1:

For this joiner I liked the process of building up the layers, on top of one another, and repeating certain areas of the portrait as this effect builds you up and leads your focus into the centre of the portrait, were certain details and elevated more as they are a repeated detail or they are broken away, resulting in this fragmented look.

Overall the photogrpah achieved an interesting effect, and leaded your eye into the the centre as the fragmented pieces alters the way you look into it. I like this idea of repeating aspects of the photo then layering this on top of one another which highlights certain details which you wouldn’t notice straight away. This mis-leads your eye and creates movement as it alters your focus as it isn’t obviously clear what the focal point is.

Inspired by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, I wanted to experiment with other ways that I could re-join/ re-connect the photo back together, that still showed the disjointed and fragmented look, so for this photograph I took inspiration from Kirchner’s loose painting style and expressed this within my own style.

I used the same process as I used for the joiners and created individual layers and pieced them together to form a mosaic pattern, leaving a small gap between each piece. This became interesting as each shape was different in size which resulted in this interesting composition and dynamic arrangement of each piece of the image. I liked this idea of how the photo was disconnected, fragmented and broken up by each individual piece, then it was reconnected back together in a similar way. I like the uneven-ness of the image as it creates this interesting movement and figurative style as it is disconnected which describes the opposite of union ( two subjects connected together.) It is expressive because each area of the photo is broken up in a similar shape and size, but differs in the composition and layout.

• A girl
• My sister
• Subject looking in a mirror
• Makeup
• Curlers in hair
• Perspectives
• A mirror
• Viewer Looking through a mirror
• Mutual facial expressions

who, what when, how where

For this photo shoot I am going to have my sister as the subject, and capture her in different moments, in particular as she is applying her makeup, doing her hair and then portraits of her once she is ready. My goal is to document her as she gets ready in her ‘natural’ environment, capturing unfiltered moments that express her inner world. I am going to slightly edit the images, adjusting areas slightly for example highlights and shadows, then showing the subtle contrast that is created from this.

Contact Sheet:

Edited:

Evaluation:

For these portraits I captured a girl as she gets ready, from applying her makeup to her afterwards. I thought this represented union as it shows her and and her world, and how both are connected together. I wanted to capture portraits of the subject as this showed their connection, to then editing the photos in a to form a mosaic pattern. This creates and interesting effect as multiple perspectives are revealed, altering your overall perspective of the image. For the lighting I used a lgiht as well as natural lighting which helped enhance the details of the image. I decided to have the subject holding a makeup brush whilst looking into the camera as this created a strong connection to the audience, as it shows a single moment unfiltered moment which is what I think best describes union.

Documentary Photography

What is documentary Photography?

Documentary photography is a genre of photography that aims to capture real-life events, environments, and individuals in a way that tells a story, conveys a message, or documents history. The key characteristic of documentary photography is that it focuses on truthful, objective representation rather than artistic manipulation. It seeks to provide an unembellished record of people, places, and situations, often with a social, political, or historical context.

What are some key concepts?

Realism and Authenticity

Documentary photography emphasizes a realistic and authentic representation of its subjects. Unlike staged or heavily edited photographs, documentary images aim to present the world as it is, often capturing moments that are fleeting or unplanned. The intention is to provide a truthful portrayal without manipulation or idealization. The goal is often to highlight real human conditions, social issues, or historical events, providing a raw, unfiltered glimpse into life.

Storytelling and Social Commentary

Documentary photography serves as a powerful tool for storytelling. It can be used to document significant events, everyday life, or aspects of society that are otherwise overlooked or ignored. Often, the photographs are meant to provoke thought, raise awareness, and sometimes even inspire social change by capturing moments that reveal injustices, inequalities, or the beauty of the human experience. For example, photojournalism is a form of documentary photography that focuses on documenting current events and news stories, aiming to inform the public about important issues.

Unposed and Candid

In documentary photography, the photographer often works in a candid manner, capturing subjects without them being aware or without posing. This approach helps to create a sense of naturalism, ensuring that the subjects are shown in their most authentic form. The focus is not on manipulating the subject’s appearance but rather on documenting their real-life context and the moment’s truth.

Artist Reference

Robert Frank

Who is he?

Robert Frank (1924–2019) was a Swiss-American photographer and filmmaker, widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of documentary photography. He is best known for his ground-breaking work, particularly his book “The Americans” (1958), which is considered one of the most important photographic works of the 20th century.

What is the Americans?

“The Americans” is Robert Frank’s most famous work, a collection of photographs taken during his road trip across the United States in 1955–1956. The book includes 83 images that depict the diversity and complexities of American life, from the rich to the poor, from everyday scenes to the marginalized. His style in “The Americans” was raw and uncompromising, capturing unsentimental and sometimes uncomfortable realities of American society. He did not shy away from showing alienation, inequality, and discontent, which contrasted with the idealized representations of America often seen in the media at the time. The book was initially met with some criticism for its unorthodox style, but it later became a landmark in the history of photography. It challenged the traditional aesthetics of the time and is credited with transforming documentary photography into a medium for personal expression.

Robert Frank’s work is fundamentally tied to documentary photography, as he played a crucial role in reshaping the genre and pushing it beyond its traditional boundaries.

• How to Incorporate:
  • Documenting Union: Capture the collective identity of groups, whether they are families, labor unions, or cultural communities, showing how people come together in moments of shared purpose or adversity.