PART TWO - Exercise 1 - 1939 Article on Documentary Photography

By Elizabeth McCausland.


I have read the 1939 article on Documentary Photography and I have made bullet points below.

• The rise of documentary photography is not fashion, its rapid growth represents strong organic forces.
• Documentary is not just a fad because of what lies in the history of other movements of photography.
• We have the new function of Documentary photography, an application of photography direct, realistic, dedicated to the profound and sober, chronicling of the external world.
• There are different directions and purposes for photography. 
• Old style photography and new style are like the difference between two continents. We all have pretty pictures .. picturesque bits of life torn out of their sordid context. 
• It is life that is exciting and important - and life whole and unretouched.
• Photography looks at the outside world with uncompromising honesty.
• The camera may lie - over-looking peeling paint & rotting wood.
• Old womans hands knotted hands - symbol of social distortion.
• The photographer controls the new aesthetic, finds the significant truth and guess significant form.
• The channels of distribution for truth are no more numerous for the photographer than for the printed or spoken - the arts.
• The opportunities for publishing honest photography of the present day life in magazines or newspapers are not many.
• What is ideal - a hundred years ago when photography was born, an enthusiast cried .. "from this day painting is dead" ... nevertheless painting has survived till the present.
• Is Photography Art ?? ..... Progressive photographers are not especially interested in this point - it seems and empty issue. There is a whole wide world before the lens and reality uniting to be set down imperishably. 
• Photography is not art in the old sense - its bound to realism.
• Today we do not want emotion from art - we want solid substantial food on which to bite, strong, hearty.
• Truth not romancing.
• Yet this truth is not made in the desert with none to hear. 
• For communication the photograph has qualities equaled by no other pictorial medium.
• The blink of the camera eye has reality captured. 
• No limit to the world of external reality that the photographer may record.
• Photographers personality mustn't take over his subject, its important the images and there meaning must shine through.

I feel this is giving a general overview of Documentary raising lots of points, for further discussion later in the section.  Its giving you an idea of what its covering - what documentary means.