Exercise - Discussing Documentary

By Maartje van den Heuvel.

http://www.oca-student.com/node/93673


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 DISCUSSING DOCUMENTARY 

There are discussions about the legitimacy and effectiveness of documentary practices
within the art circuit.  Whether documentary can still perform its communicative role in the museum.
The mass media dominate our perception of reality, more and more, and current generations are growing up with a constant stream of photographic and film images.  It is where we inform, amaze and entertain ourselves.  Visual literacy refers to ones ability to distinguish and interpret visible actions.

If you are visually literate then you can change these to communication, you can visually fathom their meaning. This develops by looking at a lot of mass media.
Documentary applies to every image made with a camera. The origins would be the 1900's, with photographers such as Jacob Riis and Lewis Hine.   Their photographic work emerged from strong compassion for immigrants, workers and farmers who at that time were living in wretched conditions.
The term documentary was first linked to film - a documentary was meant to describe things from actual life objectively and realistically - as opposed to the subjectivity of films that represent a fictitious reality.

The germans workers' photography movement came to an abrupt end when Hitler came to power 1933.
As the 35mm camera developed the coarse grain black and white documentary photographs developed.

The 1970's bought the TV, knowledge about visual literacy became widespread.
Alternatives in the forms of documentary, there have also emerged more alternatives in the choice of subject.  it is no longer the under privileged and victims.

Everyone has their different styles of how they present images and some let the picture tell the story, some photographers tell their story, and others let the story be told by the person in the picture.

There are also photographers who simulate photography in completely artificial surroundings, for example wax works with just a suggestion of reality.  Another photographer Jeff Wall has been making documentary looking photos since the 70's, however they are all carefully staged, showing how cliched they can be.   Both dwell on the construction of documentary images and expose their manipulative effect.
The debate about the documantary in an art context should take visual literacy as its starting point to a greater degree, thereby enabling the significance and value of documentary photography and film in art to be better assessed.