THE DOCUMENT

9^TH December

THE DOCUMENT

-Joseph Nicéphone Nicépce (1826)

                ‘View from a window of La Gras’

-Capture, record the world.

-James Nachtwey

‘I have been a witness, and these pictures are my testimony. The events I have recorded should not be forgotten as well as the historical and must not be repeated.’

Frances Firth (1857)  ‘Entrance to the Great Temple’

William Edward Kilburn ‘The Great Chart Meeting at the Common’ 1848

Neutral -distance from photo- recording historically

                -no one is looking- so it seens he’s not influencing anyone.

                -just historical

But the photographer always has a reason.

The decisive moment

-          Photography achieves its highest distinction – reflecting the universality of the human condition.

Henri Cartier                      Bresson, 1932.

The essence of recording the world in one second in just recording it as a document it is the art- one second later it wouldn’t be there.

Jacob Reiss – American Slunms

(1888)                   -not authentic, the compositions. The people are posing. Would have taken a while to put together, probably paid.

Louis Hine – Sociologist- actually records and analyses

1908- child labourers.

-Left wing- to expose the underclass.

FSA photographers (1935-44)

Farm Security Administration

Dorothea Lange – 1936

                Look of 3/4 distance – thinking ahead. Concerned about the future, as Presidents do.

Archive shows photographers way of thinking – kept by the FSA.

Magnum Group

Founded in 1947 by Cartier-Bresson and Robert Capa.

Ethos of documenting the world and its social problems.

Internationalism and mobility – whenever there was something that needed recording, someone could be there.

Robert Capa – ‘Falling Soldier’. Spanish Civil war

Is it fact? But shown to be fact.

Nick Ut (1972) ‘Accidental Napalm Attack’

Exhaustion of the photographers ability to change the world.

Ron McCullin (1968) ‘Shell Shocked Soldier)

Banned from Falklands war, didn’t want to show the reality. Positivity.

Conceptual Art- failed,

Photography used to document art, and art was sold

Now Photography is Art, and conceptual art is no longer relevant.

Bertolt Brecht (1931)

By trying to reconstruct reality is the only time you get anything useful.

Gillian Wearing (1992-3)

‘Signs to say what you want them to say’

Jeremy Deller (2001) The Battle of Orgreave

Complete reconstruction.

Jeff Wall Dead Troops Talk

Construction of reality- with photos merged together.

Lukacs- ‘Theory of the Novel’

Narration vs. Description