”Borders of Documentary“ is the sub-title of the present issue.
We had wanted to dedicate an issue to the theme of the documentary from the first moment the magazine was founded. It was clear however, that for some time a certain crucial shift had been taking place in terms of the concept of the ”documentary“ and of ”documentary photography“ - in terms of approach, perspective, and the choice of priorities. Most of the members of our editorial board there gradually developed an awareness that it would be necessary to attempt a deeper analysis of this popular field of photography, and to collect enough material to serve as a basis for this analysis. It seems that in the last decade a great change has occured even in that there has been a considerable shift in the understanding of the medium of photography as a whole. In the current and third year of the magazine's existence, we decided to feature this topic, which remains both pressing and delicate, and to contribute to a debate which has not yet begun, regarding the direction and tendency of documentary photography today.
This transformation in the concept and perception of the documentary, however, cannot be viewed separately from the transformation of photography as an entirety during the post-modern era.
What, then, is photography today?
It is a medium that successfully resists being precisely categorized or clearly defined. It is certain that alongside literature it has evolved over the last two or three decades into the most democratic artistic medium. Everyone knows how to write, and just about everyone these days owns and is able to operate a camera. The automatization of the past two decades, and the current digitalization of processing, or even of taking photographs, have led us to where pressing the shutter release has in fact become the only really essential aspect of the process. However, this paradoxically means that the author who is ”pressing the shutter release“ can no longer become an original artist- photographer simply by virtue of mastering the craft. This was never really quite the case, but as with all of the other artistic professions based in an exacting skill or craftmanship, such as painting or sculpture among others, the sense of craftmanship was often taken for art. Even though the mastery of the craft is important for the outcome, it can be made up for by a well-chosen collaborator in order to carry out the work itself - a lab assistant, or even a hired craftsman photographer. Is photography then the mere realization of an idea powerful enough to pass as a work of art in its own right? Not even this thesis holds up when confronted with photographs that were created ”for no special reason“, free from any artistic aspiration, and yet became art in spite of it. (At least we tend to view them as such.)
If the impact of the traditional visual arts was directed mostly towards the area of perception, in photography there exists to a far greater degree an entirely separate range of output, most formidably in terms of social themes and sociological issues. It is here in particular that what we have traditionally have called ”documentary“ photography comes into play. However, if the classical models of this photographic category primarily focused their attention on traditionally humanist themes - capturing unguarded moments in street scenes, recording moving or comical moments, or contemplating human relationships through imaginative shots, this area seemed to become empty rather quickly, as if all that was essential had already been mined from it, and the degree of repetition started to devalue the experiences, and to slightly bore its audiences.
The seminal Czech documentary photographers - Koudelka, Kratochvíl, Kolář, Štreit, Hanke, Hochová, Luskačová and others - still find a large and appreciative viewership, but it is evident that their genre has in the meanwhile shifted its attention elsewhere. Koudelka has long since devoted himself to a different area - the large-format landscape panorama and the whole Czech documentary photography scene seems to be waiting for a fresh impulse. On the one hand, there is the effort to create some kind of conglomerate record of an attractive event, a formally and visually sophisticated composition, and at the same time an appeal to the viewer's emotional, emphatic side. This has been a dominant tend on both the Czech and international photography scenes for so long that it has probably become necessary to search for new approaches. Hints of this new tendency appeared even earlier, but only in the last few years have they acquired the character of an altogether new trend. For more than a decade in international photography there has been a distinctive effort to use the original documentary method for the expression of a personal concept (Jeff Wall), or to play with it within the framework of staged documentary scenes (Philip-Lorca diCorcia) or, on the contrary, to give up on the formal elements of a compositional and situational aesthetic and the creation of what is now almost pejoratively called art photography, and to work instead on a personal record, a sort of visual diary, full of photographs that consciously (or at least seemingly) ignore aesthetic criteria (we may cite the work of Nan Goldin, and before her Larry Clark and others). At the same time there is a whole pleiad of notable artists worldwide who in some way address the documentary method through their work while directing their efforts elsewhere.
Important for an understanding of this more extreme stance was the exhibition 'Cruel and Tender' which opened in 2003 at the Tate Modern in London. If all of the participating artists selected by the curators had in common a certain fascination with a ”pure“ record of reality, some- thing still distinguished them from one another. There was in particular a difference in conception between the American and German artists - photographers from those two countries were the most numerically represented in the exhibition. And even if no art curator would apply the term ”photographic documentary“ to the work of many of the participants (as for instance with the work of the Bechers, and, continuing in this line, with Gursky, Ruff and Struth - or, on the other side of the ocean, Lewis Baltz, Stephen Shore, or Williams Eggleston) it is evident that all of the artists shared a common interest - to cover in their work material drawn from "ordinary reality", in no way refined by special techniques, dramatic moments or a cleverly palmed off imaginativism.
In a summary of other names, there are artists whose work is usually ranked in the area of documentary photography - we would probably have no trouble finding names such as August Sander, Walker Evans, Garry Winogrand, Robert Frank, Diane Arbus, and Martin Paar on lists of documentary photographers - yet even here we encounter the very palpable problem of where to draw the line of distinction. Do we still include in this group Lee Friedlander or Reneke Dijkster? Or Nicholas Nixon, and his famous concept piece The Brown Sisters? And what about the exhibitionistic conceptualist Boris Mikhailov? In my opinion his series Case History uses the method of humanist documentary only to attract the attention of audiences, chiefly in the West, for whom the dose of bluntness in the form of vodka-soaked Russian homeless people and their willingness to pose is pleasantly titallating.
It therefore seems that the definition of categories that had given rise to the creation of the concept of the photographic documentary has ceased to be precise, or rather, has ceased to even be relevant. Naturally, there are categories derived from it that could be applied, such as ”conceptual documentary”, ”staged documentary”, or ”post-documentary”, and perhaps others, but I think it is time to think of a completely different categorization of the medium of photography, to define the category of ”documentary photography” in an altogether new way.
We had wanted to dedicate an issue to the theme of the documentary from the first moment the magazine was founded. It was clear however, that for some time a certain crucial shift had been taking place in terms of the concept of the ”documentary“ and of ”documentary photography“ - in terms of approach, perspective, and the choice of priorities. Most of the members of our editorial board there gradually developed an awareness that it would be necessary to attempt a deeper analysis of this popular field of photography, and to collect enough material to serve as a basis for this analysis. It seems that in the last decade a great change has occured even in that there has been a considerable shift in the understanding of the medium of photography as a whole. In the current and third year of the magazine's existence, we decided to feature this topic, which remains both pressing and delicate, and to contribute to a debate which has not yet begun, regarding the direction and tendency of documentary photography today.
This transformation in the concept and perception of the documentary, however, cannot be viewed separately from the transformation of photography as an entirety during the post-modern era.
What, then, is photography today?
It is a medium that successfully resists being precisely categorized or clearly defined. It is certain that alongside literature it has evolved over the last two or three decades into the most democratic artistic medium. Everyone knows how to write, and just about everyone these days owns and is able to operate a camera. The automatization of the past two decades, and the current digitalization of processing, or even of taking photographs, have led us to where pressing the shutter release has in fact become the only really essential aspect of the process. However, this paradoxically means that the author who is ”pressing the shutter release“ can no longer become an original artist- photographer simply by virtue of mastering the craft. This was never really quite the case, but as with all of the other artistic professions based in an exacting skill or craftmanship, such as painting or sculpture among others, the sense of craftmanship was often taken for art. Even though the mastery of the craft is important for the outcome, it can be made up for by a well-chosen collaborator in order to carry out the work itself - a lab assistant, or even a hired craftsman photographer. Is photography then the mere realization of an idea powerful enough to pass as a work of art in its own right? Not even this thesis holds up when confronted with photographs that were created ”for no special reason“, free from any artistic aspiration, and yet became art in spite of it. (At least we tend to view them as such.)
If the impact of the traditional visual arts was directed mostly towards the area of perception, in photography there exists to a far greater degree an entirely separate range of output, most formidably in terms of social themes and sociological issues. It is here in particular that what we have traditionally have called ”documentary“ photography comes into play. However, if the classical models of this photographic category primarily focused their attention on traditionally humanist themes - capturing unguarded moments in street scenes, recording moving or comical moments, or contemplating human relationships through imaginative shots, this area seemed to become empty rather quickly, as if all that was essential had already been mined from it, and the degree of repetition started to devalue the experiences, and to slightly bore its audiences.
The seminal Czech documentary photographers - Koudelka, Kratochvíl, Kolář, Štreit, Hanke, Hochová, Luskačová and others - still find a large and appreciative viewership, but it is evident that their genre has in the meanwhile shifted its attention elsewhere. Koudelka has long since devoted himself to a different area - the large-format landscape panorama and the whole Czech documentary photography scene seems to be waiting for a fresh impulse. On the one hand, there is the effort to create some kind of conglomerate record of an attractive event, a formally and visually sophisticated composition, and at the same time an appeal to the viewer's emotional, emphatic side. This has been a dominant tend on both the Czech and international photography scenes for so long that it has probably become necessary to search for new approaches. Hints of this new tendency appeared even earlier, but only in the last few years have they acquired the character of an altogether new trend. For more than a decade in international photography there has been a distinctive effort to use the original documentary method for the expression of a personal concept (Jeff Wall), or to play with it within the framework of staged documentary scenes (Philip-Lorca diCorcia) or, on the contrary, to give up on the formal elements of a compositional and situational aesthetic and the creation of what is now almost pejoratively called art photography, and to work instead on a personal record, a sort of visual diary, full of photographs that consciously (or at least seemingly) ignore aesthetic criteria (we may cite the work of Nan Goldin, and before her Larry Clark and others). At the same time there is a whole pleiad of notable artists worldwide who in some way address the documentary method through their work while directing their efforts elsewhere.
Important for an understanding of this more extreme stance was the exhibition 'Cruel and Tender' which opened in 2003 at the Tate Modern in London. If all of the participating artists selected by the curators had in common a certain fascination with a ”pure“ record of reality, some- thing still distinguished them from one another. There was in particular a difference in conception between the American and German artists - photographers from those two countries were the most numerically represented in the exhibition. And even if no art curator would apply the term ”photographic documentary“ to the work of many of the participants (as for instance with the work of the Bechers, and, continuing in this line, with Gursky, Ruff and Struth - or, on the other side of the ocean, Lewis Baltz, Stephen Shore, or Williams Eggleston) it is evident that all of the artists shared a common interest - to cover in their work material drawn from "ordinary reality", in no way refined by special techniques, dramatic moments or a cleverly palmed off imaginativism.
In a summary of other names, there are artists whose work is usually ranked in the area of documentary photography - we would probably have no trouble finding names such as August Sander, Walker Evans, Garry Winogrand, Robert Frank, Diane Arbus, and Martin Paar on lists of documentary photographers - yet even here we encounter the very palpable problem of where to draw the line of distinction. Do we still include in this group Lee Friedlander or Reneke Dijkster? Or Nicholas Nixon, and his famous concept piece The Brown Sisters? And what about the exhibitionistic conceptualist Boris Mikhailov? In my opinion his series Case History uses the method of humanist documentary only to attract the attention of audiences, chiefly in the West, for whom the dose of bluntness in the form of vodka-soaked Russian homeless people and their willingness to pose is pleasantly titallating.
It therefore seems that the definition of categories that had given rise to the creation of the concept of the photographic documentary has ceased to be precise, or rather, has ceased to even be relevant. Naturally, there are categories derived from it that could be applied, such as ”conceptual documentary”, ”staged documentary”, or ”post-documentary”, and perhaps others, but I think it is time to think of a completely different categorization of the medium of photography, to define the category of ”documentary photography” in an altogether new way.